Lunacy at its Finest
by TheSmilingOrangeEpidemic
Summary: He can hear the TARDIS beckoning under the vestiges of the burned out stars—that is until the ginger is in his face and screaming, yelling at him to get up or do something and wipe that stupid grin off his face (what stupid grin? Rose Tyler is dancing barefoot in the fountain).
1. Chapter 1

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter One_

* * *

He doesn't quite know what to think. The lines of sanity and madness have coalesced and have just as easily broken apart, teetering and taunting him with blurred lines of ingenuity and color. He finds himself a bit exasperated, but it's just as pleasant, because he is watching a group of protesters rioting over taxes or socks or something equally as important, and his mind has muddled his memories and he is watching the blonde woman laugh gaily about a fountain, feet splashing diamonds into the air and voice loud and thundering.

He wants to approach her, he does, but he worries the image will slip and erode, and he is content watching her hair ride against the breeze and her cheeks redden under her profound yells.

He wonders what sort of enemy he's fallen into the hands of now, or at what point did he trip into this madness (it's about time anyway), but he's enjoying himself too much, and it's been very long since he's seen that face.

It's been a long time since he's seen Rose Tyler.

He wonders, perhaps, if Susan or Ace will pop out of the cracks of the ground as well and join the activists in their rally, or if maybe Donna will grow out of the water and roar about shoes. He wonders where Amy and Rory are, but then decides that in this dream state, it doesn't even matter (they aren't real, of course.)

That is until the ginger is in his face and screaming, yelling at him to get up or do something and _wipe that stupid grin off his face_ (what stupid grin? Rose Tyler is dancing barefoot in the fountain).

And then Amy punches him and it hurts and he wonders whether pain can be as real as the sting on his chest. Does madness dilute pain? Obviously, no, but ache within the dream was as real as when living in it. (The TARDIS beckons under the vestiges of the burned out stars)

Rory, at this point, has joined in and is yelling and frantic. There is some alien or he is the alien and something is wrong. The Doctor seeks Rose out amongst the protestors, catching her eyes and giving her a smile. She pauses, her eyes lapping him the way the water turrets on her calves, and he is waving her over. _Come here, Rose Tyler! I've got Ponds with me! My, I haven't seen you since that beach! Have you seen the chip stand? The seat next to me is empty._

The Ponds are still deftly trying to stir a reaction from him, and he gently tells them to sod off from his dream (reality? Even if it were mad?).

"Dream?" Amy echoes, her eyes blazing. "You better get up, you bowtie-wearing clown! Why on earth would you think this is a dream?!"

How stupid of her to ask. He gives her a pointed look. "Because Rose Tyler is dancing in the fountain."

They follow his gaze and peer at him curiously.

"Who?"

Rose Tyler is not dancing in the fountain.

The place she had just been seems just a little greyer, and the Doctor feels so much older. He wonders if he'll start seeing his other companions as well. He hopes Peri will spare him the teasing, or Martha will hide her gun, or that Rose will return wearing her Union Jack. He doesn't think he'll be able to hold himself.

* * *

He is three minutes from executing his brilliant plan and saving Southern Asia (and a bit of Sweden) from a neutralizing particle disabler stuck on an active mode of _deatomizing_ when everything is set into place, and the alarms stop blaring, and the troops are singing. He regards absently that he hasn't struck the button as Amy and Rory envelop him in praise and gratitude. Already (and without his meddling), the circuits had been set up on a secondary fuse out of aluminium, seventeen paperclips, and the carbon-silicon casing within backup generators (_genius_), and he is silent, his mind rushing with questions and furious with answers that made no sense.

And then blonde catches his eye, and he whips his head around so fast that Amy is startled, stumbling back onto Rory.

"Doctor?"

He is not listening, entranced by the apologetic smile thrown at him before she disappears, vacuuming the room with her and leaving him numb with disbelief. He idly wonders if it's about time he regenerated once more. This body is too quick to discard its desires and not quick enough to contain his fury. He searches the entire building and barrack field twice, any sign of waving hands and cheeky smiles and feet in the fountain—nothing, he's given, and the TARDIS is silent to his callings.

Out of frustration, he finds himself eating through seven packs of Jammy Dodgers before Amy has the sense to lock him in the freezer.


	2. Chapter 2

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Two_

* * *

It drove him a smidge (a _smidge_) more than mad. At every trace of blonde hair he found himself turning, running, catching faces that were not hers and scolding himself on his ridiculousness. Rose Tyler was in a parallel world with a human Meta-Crisis version of himself and they were off having a fantastic time being human and alive with their beans-on-toast and…

He grunted, kicking the ground and directing the Ponds to some tourist shop. He could be atoned to sulking, and Amy would probably harass him on it later, but she always gave him a mandatory twenty minutes of authorized moping before doing anything, and such, she deftly left him to his scowl.

It was all just as well, because just as he was about to reach the end of his privileged sulking, he found himself momentarily distracted by the Ponds' conversation

"Now that's not something you see every day—and for us, that's saying something." Rory's words quietly registered in his mind, and he reflexively looked up as to what caught their attention. His hearts froze as he watched the blonde woman struggle with a twenty-foot sea bass dressed up in cliché Hawaiian tourist clothing and a ranger hat. For moments, he was entranced, unable to process the sight of Rose Tyler dragging a twenty-foot sea bass in a Staten and a flower-print button-up, the fins of the fish poking out of the armholes.

Rose Tyler.

With a fish.

(With a dalek, he didn't care)

He was already running.

It was all just as well, too, because at that very moment, the buildings behind him collapsed into explosions and the distinctive roar of a Mahimaleos echoed loudly amongst the screaming inhabitants. He turned his head, his neck frozen hallway through his tilt. With whipping speed, he looked back, worried that the instinctive move had cost him his moment with Rose Tyler.

His heart eased and crumpled the instant their eyes caught one another's. Honest-to-God Rose Tyler and her honest-to-God twenty-foot fish.

And the honest-to-God roaring resounding loudly from behind him. There was a choice in that moment, and it was humanity or Rose Tyler. She smiled at him contritely, an apology tripping silently off her tongue, and she was already turning away.

Bowties and no Rose Tyler. He reared himself into reality, allowing the sense of detachment to permeate through him, driven by the surrealism of the situation. After all that time, was he really about to run towards what he best believed (the only possible way) was a hallucination, at most? _Bowties and no Rose Tyler._He didn't approach her (it was wrong) and he stood back, numb with the thought of _no looking back and Rose Tyler is very very far._

He turned to the explosions, the screams rattling in his ears and that sound of Rose-but-can't-be-Rose's footsteps ringing even louder, more deafening than the roars and the fire and…

He started moving. He was not going back. He won't. He can't.

But he also can't help himself and he glanced back, just to see if the hallucination or phantasm or fantasy had faded, if his mind had settled , but he was greeted with a sight this body was not used to (or anybody, for the matter.)

The sight of Rose Tyler's back, walking away from him.

He couldn't even _attempt_ to swallow the desperate surge that flooded out of his throat in a choke, crashing over him like an all new misery he'd never experienced before.

_Don't look back we don't look back we never ever look back_

Rose who shouldn't be here or humanity that needed him.

He didn't even think about it.

_Count the seconds how many footsteps pat patpatpat thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five-_

His hand hit her shoulder and then he pulled her into him, ignoring the bloody idiotic fish pressed between them. His arms clenched around her tightly, suffocating her into him out of the need to feel her _here_ and reciprocate his inability to _think hear breathe_ properly, smothering her as she smothered him with only her presence. _He shouldn't be here it was wrong Rose Tyler where have you been you're here_

He registered mutely that she didn't respond to him, her arms glued to the slimy fish trapped between them. He pulled back, a gnawing growth cultivating in his ribs, and he found himself flustered as she handed him the fish with a pleasant beam. "Hold onto this for me, 'kay?"

He didn't understand, his mind quieting as his limbs, firm yet hollow, let her shift the weight of the bass on to him. He mutely hoped she was promising something to him, but he dared not let his voice shatter into the moment. He accepted the fish with a more-than terrified nod (he'd take anything as he still couldn't really believe she was here and tangible and _in front of him.)_ She nodded appreciatively and waved and ran away, and he wanted to run away with her, but the children were going to start crying soon and he needed to figure out a way of subduing the beast without killing it.

It's all just as well that the fifty-foot hairy beast took a liking to the sea bass and promptly kidnapped it to take it as a mate and approach the marital rituals back on its home planet. He idly wondered if she knew.

Against the confusion and anger and apprehension, he couldn't stop that little flower that blossomed beneath his chest, brushing softly and excitedly in jitters between his two hearts, coloring him in an anxious warmth. He had seen Rose Tyler and he had the pungent smell of fish to prove it.

* * *

He saw her at least two more times since the last incident (one stealing a horse with a giant pickle in hand and the other slipping into the sewers with a suspiciously hairy dentist), and every time she managed to slip away with a flip of blonde hair to a corner. It didn't matter that he ran or searched or fussed; she was always gone.

He'd rip his own hair out if he weren't worried that his actual age might coincide with this body, and he didn't fancy being bald (it would look terrible with the no eyebrows and the massive chin). So he buried himself in troubles, as he always did, and silently hoped her jeopardy-friendly nature might just offer him an opportunity.

It did, of course. His life was too interesting for it not to happen.

Except, he didn't expect to find her sleeping in an underground subway next to a rusted wall covered in obscene graffiti. The car was shaking under the speed and turbulence, and the Doctor had been in midst of checking out a suspicious driver.

Oh, well. Amy and Rory had gone ahead of him anyway. They could handle themselves.

Probably.

He'd wait for them to start screaming.

Until then, he was a bit caught up in the smoothness of her cheekbones and the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders. He wanted to speak with her, but his arms seemed to disconnect from the rest of his body and he couldn't bring himself to wake her.

He heard Rory's yelp from the inner tunnels of the car, and the wagon heaved and forced him onto the ground. He caught himself by the palms, wincing at the sting of the rough ground. The subway shifted and trembled in worrisome croaks—and then the yellow the wagon and the loud tremors of the metal screeching against the tracks and the flashing lights from the dirt beyond all melted away into a bleak haze that drowned everything.

Green slipped into brown.

"_Rose."_

She yawned sleepily and regarded him through a lethargic shrug, her eyelids fluttering distractedly. "Mrghrr—hello."

A laugh broke out his lips, the minuscule familiarity breaking through his nervousness and his fear. He gave her a wobbly smile, his gaze drinking in the comfortingly memorable face. It had been such a long time. "Hi."

"We're…" She took a moment to study her surroundings, and he didn't stop studying her. "in a… metro, yeah? Bloody Weevils…"

"Rose…" Her eyes fell on him again and his blood solidified within his veins. "You're _here_."

She tilted her head, a mystified look on her face. "Yes, well, so are you."

"No, but…" He felt another laugh breaking through, the ludicrousness of the situation sinking into him. "You're here. In this subway cart. With me."

She gave the wagon another look-over before observing him once more, and he shifted uneasily from his position on the floor. "Okay."

His eyebrows furrowed. "No, but Rose, you're _here_. How are you here? You're supposed—you're supposed to be in Pete's World, with…"

He didn't know why he couldn't finish the sentence. He was the one who made the decision and passed the judgment on the Meta-Crisis. The man had committed genocide and he had no place in a universe where his self-sacrificing martyr self already existed. He was human with a superior brain and there was a whole other vast universe, just void of one and calling for a Time Lord. He had nothing against the Meta-Crisis, per se (aside from the genocide that went against every rule in his book).

It might've been because that was the man he'd given Rose Tyler to.

Maybe.

Her eyes softened, her gaze dropping to his bowtie and her mouth forming a wry smile. "Yeah."

His frown deepened, but curiosity had always been merciless with him and he didn't have the self-restraint not to ask. "Where is he?"

Her eyes strayed to the dingy floor, her shoulders sagging slightly. "He's gone."

_Gone…?_

Gone could mean a lot of things. Gone could be back in ordinary life with no recollection of the fantastic one without being consumed. Gone could be stranded on a planet that was burning. Gone could be trapped in a parallel world.

"How… How did he…" _How did you lose him? (what happened to forever?)_

She met his eyes, brown with resignation and defeat. "It was his time."

_Oh. _

He had always tried not to think about the many possibilities that the choice he'd made could go downhill. He always liked to imagine that Rose and he would always manage to work things out. Otherwise, he didn't ponder at all.

Which meant he never really considered the possibility that his Meta-Crisis would die before Rose would. (He'd never had it that way.)

And then the guilt crashed. (oh god, she looks so _young_. how many years must've barely passed?)

"Rose…" He wanted to say words, be magnificent and comforting and _**apologize**__ because he didn't know he couldn't have known he wanted her to have the best of him._

She shook her head, her gold locks following her. "No, it's… It's alright, really. It's been a while now." _it's not alright rose I'm so sorry_

Amy's scream barely registered in his head, but Rose reacted deftly, slipping off her seat and joining him on the floor just as a gelatin-resembling pincer zoomed over their crowns. He was still not listening, stuck in the afterglow of apple grass and long lashes and what Rose being there meant. The universe had delivered her back to him.

Before he could even process, even consider(dangerous because Rose is here and the walls are taunting him), the wagon teetered dangerously and his ears were saluted by the grinding noise of metal wedding metal in a hot screech. A broiling scent of hair and oil leaked into the room in the form of a yellow mist, and the temperature hiked several blistering degrees higher. The lights flickered haphazardly, and Amy's scream pierced into the cart once more, and amongst all the chaos, his hand sought hers.

Except he came back empty.

Rose Tyler was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Three_

* * *

After returning from the metro incident, the Doctor threw himself hard at work at tracking her down. There was no denying her existence in their world now.

Amy and Rory lingered behind him curiously, matching quizzical expressions on both their faces. Amy stepped around him, peering at the furious pace his hands worked at. "Doctor? What're you tryin' to do?"

"I'm busy, Amelia." He dismissed with a wave, distractedly returning to his work, but Amy would have none of it. Her eyes narrowed gravely, and Rory took an instinctive step back, choosing not to get involved if things started to get ugly (things happened that way around Amy).

She slammed one of her hands down over the Doctor's, moving her face close to his. "It's got somethin' to do with that girl, yeah? The one with the fish? The one you've been seein' and obsessin' over. That…"

Her expression drew off for a moment, her gaze seeking Rory's for assistance, and with a roll of his eyes, he relented. "Rose Tyler."

"Rose Tyler!" Amy chirped, trying to catch his eyes, but he kept turning his face away. "_Rose Tyler_. So. Who is she and whaddya want with 'er?"

"She… It's none of your business, Pond." He mustered a condescending look, but Amy frowned and descended on him with a scowl.

"Look here, Doctor. If I don't find out what's going on, I'll burn all the fishsticks we have and then I'll put them back in the freezer to delude you into eating them." She threatened warningly.

"Well, yes, but now I'm aware of your master plan and am within my limitations to avoid them." He told her smartly, dismissing her once more with a turn of his head as he maneuvered away from her.

"Tell me, Doctor." She jumped into his way, cutting off his very purposeful walk. "Do you, like, know her?"

He met her eyes, making a point to look into them. With his mouth pressed into a firm line, he responded, "No."

Amy's eyebrows rose. "You _do_ know her. Who is she?"

The Doctor's frown deepened and he moved past her, making his way down the stairs into the console room. Amy walked after him and Rory followed obediently, choosing to remain silent and in the background.

"Is she someone important?" Amy's voice bellowed after him. He ignored her and adroitly picked up his abandoned coat off the railing and donned it, his hands already working about the machinery as he flew them to a new destination.

"Leave it, Pond." His eyes were demanding but Amy was relentless.

"Is she dangerous? Or is she someone special, like a companion?" Amy's thoughtful expression deepened as her line of thought caught onto more ideas. "You're avoiding an answer, so she must be important. Wait…"

She got up in his face once more, her red hair stark against the brown tweed of his coat, her eyebrows rising suggestively. "Were you two like… _you know_…"

The TARDIS groaned as it materialized in a new location and he made a beeline for the door, paying no heed to Amy's yells or the sound of her footsteps. With quick and much practiced precision, he stepped out of the doors and made haste to pull out his screwdriver and lock the doors before Amy could open them again. The sound of her poundings resounded loudly, but he disregarded them indifferently and made his way down the stone slabs leading to the twelve-story building.

The numbers of the address rang loudly in his head and seemed to burn under his eyelids as he approached to designated door. Swallowing his unease, he knocked resolutely, stepping back and absentmindedly straightening his bowtie. The door swung open, and for a moment the Doctor was taken aback by the empty air behind the answered wooden wedge. His attention was drawn downward to the scruffy shuffling of a six-year-old child peering at him peculiarly.

The Doctor smiled, leaning forward to observe the child. "Hello, little one. I'm looking for a Mr. Mickey Smith. He wouldn't happen to live here, would he?"

The little girl's distrusting eyes washed over him before disappearing from view, leaving the Doctor with a small view of the interior of the house. The Doctor smiled nervously as he heard the little girl call out. "_Daddy_! There's a man at the door!"

The Doctor heard shuffling sounds and smiled nervously as the sound of heavy footsteps increased in volume. He took another involuntary step back, his spine straightening as a dark-skinned middle-aged man appeared at the doorway, an inquisitive frown on his face. "Can I help you?"

"Ah, yes. Well, yes… um…" He scratched his head, giving attention to the frantic bounce his hair was doing before self-consciously smoothening it back (it would never stay back, of course) and giving the man an anxious smile. The words seemed to die away, his gaze drinking in Mickey Smith and the years that had passed with him (this boy that was now a man. Hiding behind his teenage girlfriend had been so long ago). A pleased smile took the Doctor without permission, a sense of pride filtering into his chest at this bearded man.

All the while the Doctor had been mute and he became painstakingly aware of the awkward silence that permeated the air around them.

Mickey Smith frowned, his gaze travelling from the bowtie to the cut-clean boots before returning to observe the Doctor's face. The Doctor shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another (he was bad at domesticity and sometimes worse with greetings—especially reunions.) and Mickey's frown slowly fell away, a dubious grin falling into place. "Heh, I'd actually been waitin' for somethin' like this to happen."

Mickey scratched his beard, his grin growing more prominent. "Doctor?"

The Doctor cleared his throat, nodding slowly. "Yes, that would be… me."

Mickey nodded acceptingly, his knowing smile melting into a smirk. "Shoulda known. The bowtie gave you away. No human within his right mind would wear that tacky thing."

The Doctor made an indignant sound in his throat, a 'shut it, Rickey' ready to burst out of his tongue, but Mickey Smith beat him to it. "This wouldn't happen to be about Rose Tyler, would it?"

If the Doctor's ears could've twitched, they would've. Everything nervous and otherwise fell away as the Doctor stepped forward and met Mickey's amused eyes with his determined glare. "Do you know where she is?"

Mickey smirked shrewdly and opened the door wider. "Come on in."

* * *

"You've regenerated again." Mickey stated obviously, settling tea in front of the lanky, bow-tie wearing Time Lord.

"Well, yes." The Doctor shifted in his seat, his eyes avoiding the mischievously astute gaze of the ex-companion.

Mickey looked him over with a chuckle, settling in front of the Time Lord and throwing one leg over the other. "Martha knew you'd stop by as soon as you realized Rose was flitten 'bout, but it was Sarah-Jane who predicted you'd stop by _my_ place first—so there'd been me to keep an eye out for you. Wasn't sure what to expect, didn't think you'd still have the big hair anymore—sees you traded out for that chin, eh, boss? Ianto said you'd stopped by and looked all dopey-like. Wasn't expectin' the bow-tie though, mate; then again, those gave the warnin' bells."

_Martha? Ianto?Sarah-Jane?_

"You knew—_you knew_ Rose was around?" A small lace of accusation managed to chord its way into the Doctor's voice, and Mickey threw him a bleak grin.

"She wouldn't very well come home and not see us, would she?"

_Well, what-when-how?_

Mickey could see the typhoon of questions storming under the Doctor's expression, and he had the sense to look sympathetic. "Best ask her yourself, mate."

"Well, why didn't you _tell_ me?" The Doctor snapped, feeling a sense of betrayel at not being informed of something as critical as this—especially when they all knew. If he hadn't seen her himself, then… he would have never known that she…

A thickly acid streamed into his throat, but Mickey's hard-set frown seemed to cut him off. "'S not like yourself comes 'round to visit us, boss."

The Doctor felt his stomach deflate at the acute shame and guilt that poured into his lungs, but couldn't find it in himself to apologize. Not when he knew his own intentions, and had planned to carry them out fully. His actions didn't deem redemption and so he didn't ask for any.

But when Mickey smiled again, it was forgiving, and the Doctor let his hesitant bitterness settle and did not press any further.

Which left the Doctor slipping into an uneasy position, unsure of what words to call forth under the scrutiny of his former companion. Mickey let the silence grow, reveling in the Doctor's discomfort, apparently completely at ease and in no rush to start a conversation. The guilt that had waned was left to hang in the air and the hook it carried into the Doctor's throat tugged consistently and barred him from speech.

After the Doctor nearly choked on the biscuit in attempt to distract himself, Mickey finally relented with an unsympathetic—"So."

"Um…" The Doctor scratched his chin, absently considering Mickey's heavy beard. He threw his gaze to the window, hoping that Mickey would initiate, but when it became apparent that the human male was content to just sit there and watch him squirm, he turned in his seat and spoke.

"Where is she?"

Mickey regarded him for a moment, drinking from his tea with a deliberate slurp before setting it down with an easy grin. "Sorry, boss, I don't know."

The Doctor stiffened, a frown capturing his features, his words coming out carefully. "You… don't know?"

Mickey nodded. "Rose doesn't exactly stay in one place. It isn't very easy finding her if you aren't lucky."

The Doctor's shoulders sagged helplessly. "Well, do you—do you see her?"

"Yeah, she does visit." Mickey nodded, smiling despite himself. "How long's it been for you? Since you last saw us then."

The Doctor opened his mouth to answer, and then decided against it. He wasn't sure how much Mickey would tell Rose (assuming he spoke to her regularly).

"Well, do you have a-a _phone_ I could call her with or-or…" Mickey was shaking his head before he could finish the question, and he felt desperation begin to sink into him. With vulnerability leaking out, he pleaded quietly. "Mickey, I need to see her."

Mickey's sniffed, his nostrils flaring. The brown of his eyes were strangely clear, and when he spoke, it was with chary. "See, Doctor, you're a bit late—or early, I figure. I wouldn't know how exactly to direct you."

The Doctor felt an alarming dejection quail between the knobs of his knees, even as confusion struck at the placement of Mickey's words. "What do yo-"

Mickey sighed, dipping a biscuit into his tea vaguely. "You could try Captain Cheesecake's place."

The Doctor's brow puckered. "Captain who?"

The lines around Mickey's eyes crinkled, his incredulous grin stretching into his sideburns. "Blimey, it _has _been a long time for you, hasn't it?"

The Doctor frowned uneasily, still silent and waiting for an answer. Mickey scratched his nose again, his eyes catching the Doctor's. "Try Jack Harkness's hub, you know—_Cardiff_. She usually hovers over there when she's in town."

* * *

Oh Mickey-Mouse-nah, I really do miss Mickey. He seemed so more mature after the finale of season two and it just gets better during 'The End of Time'. His beard. HIS BEARD.

~TSOE


	4. Chapter 4

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Four_

* * *

As the Doctor padded back to the TARDIS, he found his mind racing at the _already has been_ and _wrong timing_ but he didn't even _care_ because the paper he was clutching so tightly beneath his fingers defined everything for him.

"_One more thing, boss." The Doctor's gaze drew away from the small child hiding between her father's legs. He regarded this father, this man who was a lump clutching onto his girlfriend, and smiled to himself. "You go to the Hub, and then what? Chances are she's not even there."_

_He had considered this, of course, and gave the only possible option. "I'll wait."_

_That must've been incredibly funny because Mickey's mouth twitched hyperactively under the containment of a snigger. "Right on. Don't suit you, though. An' Rose likes to take her time—tends to get caught up in things."_

_That bit thawed the Doctor's hearts, and he could smell chips and applegrass in the wisp of a passing weave. "I'll wait. Long as I have to."_

_Mickey's expression softened into sympathy (for this was another man who once would've waited long as he had to for the same brazen blonde). He stepped towards a desk, ignoring the rapt protests of his child who tripped clumsily trying to keep a constant hold on her father's legs. Pulling out a note, he threw the Doctor a roguish smirk and held out the unobtrusive paper. The Doctor considered the writing for a moment, his hearts falling out of sync for an instant as the realization that the jotted numbers were a specific date swept over him. The stun he felt stole away with the words, but Mickey was smart and he understood._

"_Save you the trouble. Jack's said you'd come to me first. Said to give you this once you did."_

His hearts sped every time his fingers curled along the edges of the numbers, and he found his feet increasing in speed, welcoming and eager to the calls of his TARDIS. Before he even reached the doors, however, he was jumped by his very familiar angry redhead. She tackled him to the ground, a triumphant yell breaking out against his groans of pain. The not-so-Roman-anymore-Centurion winced at the sure bruise that would appear on the Doctor's ribs.

"How-how did you get out of the TARDIS?" He wheezed, grunting as Amy dug her knee into his chest.

"I called River." Amy smiled victoriously down at him.

"You _what_?" The Doctor's eyelids shot open, and true to her word, River's flirtatious smile appeared into view.

"_Hello_, sweetie."

"You…" The Doctor rasped as Amy pressed her knee harder onto his ribs. "Amy, stop-"

"That's enough, Amy. I think he gets the point." River remarked airily, her smirk prominent at his glare.

Amy got up, huffing angrily and kicking him on his side for extra measure. She walked back to Rory, leaving River to deal with the Doctor.

"So…" She settled herself next to him on the ground, her hair catching the sunlight. "What's with this Rose Tyler hunt?"

He blustered, sitting upright as he brushed himself off. "It's nothing."

River frowned, giving him the curve of her brow. "It's _not _nothing—from what I hear at least."

The Doctor rolled his eyes, feeling his own thoughts clam up on himself. "Wouldn't you already know?"

River's expression sobered; her voice quieting. "I don't."

The Doctor's retort fell away, his gaze regarding the somber look on River's face. He tore his eyes away from her stare, choosing instead to focus on the blue of the TARDIS. He wondered if she'd pull out her journal, waving temptation in front of him, unless, of course, _he_ was the one who was ahead of _her_ time, which meant that he was the one who'd already experienced the adventures, and her next ones would be with his younger selves. "When are we?"

"I don't know." She said exasperatedly, and made no movement to retrieve her journal. Instead, she turned insistently. "Who is Rose Tyler and what do you want from her?"

"She's…" It was harder to lie to River than it was to Amy. Perhaps because River always seemed to know. Or beceause she never looked at him without the despairing shadow in her eyes as she slowly fell into their contradicting timelines. Loving him was the stupidest thing she could have done. _she was going to die didn't she see that they can't be he knew he knew from the beginning "_She's a… friend."

River's gaze was suspicious. "A friend?"

The Doctor scratched the back of his neck. He heard the scrapings of stone and dirt behind him and felt the other Ponds settle beside him. Amy leaned into him, the glint in her eyes curious and thirsty. "What _kind_ of friend?"

"She was…" The Doctor didn't dare turn his head to look at any of them. Instead of answering the question, he chose to relent his reason for searching (he had to give them _something_. Otherwise they'd _never stop_). "She's not supposed to be here."

Amy and River shared equal frowns at his avoidance of the question. Before Amy could retort, Rory spoke first, his voice filtering into the sudden wind. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The Doctor shrugged, swallowing thickly against white walls and screaming Daleks. "She… She got… stuck in a parallel world. The cracks sealed off so she shouldn't… she _shouldn't_ have been able to get back."

"Well, she's obviously here." Rory scoffed.

The Doctor chuckled quietly. "Yeah."

River's hand appeared on his knee, her voice stern and inquiring. "Is there anything more to that story?"

_Anything more…? _What—like the human-self he'd left with her, or the beach in Norway, or the fact that he didn't say it, or the years of wonderful laughter and glorious running they had together?

He was a liar and deceit came easy to him, but River's earnest face caved at his hearts and _blimey, he was going to miss her (she will leave in the end they always do but River is special because she already has). _The Doctor's throat was dry when he finally answered. "No."

They all obviously didn't believe him, but chose to keep silent this time, leaving the unanswered questions to be carried by the heavy breeze.

It was Amy who finally broke the stillness. "_Whelp_, let's go find this girl. We're not gonna get any answers sittin' 'round here."

He was grateful for her hand when it hovered in front of him and revelled in the softness that reminded him of Rose's hands. He wondered if he'll get to hold the actual thing.

* * *

He's flagged down by officials before he even steps out of the ship, and Captain Jack Harkness greets him with a spectacular grin and a heady flirt.

"Tell me you've got me the nano-stabilizers and the quadro-visualizing spanner. I'm quite sure I repeatedly asked you for them and you _promised_ to get them. I also expect to collect compensation in the form of a grope if you forgot." Jack hugged the Doctor warmly and the Time Lord found himself mildly confused and pleased. It was nice to know Jack didn't harbor any harsh feelings towards his obvious regeneration and therefore obvious stretch of time separating them. (The blue box gave him away, again, but he doesn't have the heart to fix the chameleon circuit. The blue is just _so blue_.)

"Why would I have any of those things you asked for?" The Doctor questioned. Jack frowned and then smiled, the fingers on his hand twitching suggestively as it inched closer, and the Doctor had enough recollection to deftly slap the offending appendage away.

"Doctor? Remember? Last time you were round with the whole rhino incident and—" Jack cut off as his frown grew at the puzzled expression. "You don't…?"

Jack grew silent as his gaze slid off the Doctor, trailing behind him to observe the trio of Ponds curiously stepping out of the TARDIS. The captain's fine eyebrows drew together, his frown deepening as he gaze swept over the companions of the blue box before falling back on the Doctor.

"Doctor… when exactly are y-" Jack's careful words died out as he finally caught sight of the paper fisted in the Time Lord's hand. Acknowledgment met daylight and Jack Harkness was one with his duties. With an unremarkable sigh, he refuted any explanation with blatancy only he could muster. "Oh."

"When…" The Doctor frowned, but he quickly caught on. This wasn't the first time he'd been out of order (he absentmindedly glances at the trigger-happy vixen standing behind him). "I've already been here."

Jack nodded, his playfulness gone and a serious expression drawing out the lines of his face _(game station the master save everybody). _"I'm going to take it you've visited Micks."

The Doctor opened his mouth, his voice hesitating. He didn't go back. He didn't. _But it was Rose and he'd do it if he could see her again. _"I'm looking for Rose."

Jack fell into silence, his fingers raking through his dark hair and an impenetrable look casting in his eyes. They were too old men, both cowards and both changed, he that ran and he that hid, but they had both come back when she needed them most.

It was a binding point, in a way. Faith from a girl who was too young and too stupid to know otherwise, but they'd heartily accept it all the same because they were lonely and it was hard to resist her smile. And then there were the moments that never were and Martha who fought between them both and Alonso and Torchwood and all the little things that seemed to grind between them into a dust-filled lake with waves that gave into the banks of a conman and a soldier.

_War, bring bloodshed to these foolish souls who believe in kindness._

Jack's debt had been paid, and the Doctor was too buried to even whimper, but the Captain's smile was kind when they regarded him, and Jack placed a warm hand on his shoulder. "It's alright, Doctor."

_I forgive you do I need to be forgiven there are too many things yes_

"I…" Nothing came to mind but the constant thought that pulled at his strings. "I need to find her, Jack."

Jack grinned astutely and shook his head, a secret shared with only himself (people of the future were _annoying_). "Of course, _I_ tell you _now_. It was weird how you ended up in the exact time that she would come. Too much of a coincidence, but I just chalked up to your fantastic luck."

"She's not here?" The Doctor's right heart fell into his stomach, but Jack's smile did not falter.

"Well, not now. You're a smidge late, my friend." Jack grinned sheepishly, pointing at the cursive numbers. "See that one there—that's actually a seven. You're a couple of months too late, so slipping by there might be a good start… and a decent way to avoid a paradox."

The Doctor found himself sharing a broad grin with Jack, and he hugged the Captain in his delight. He even let the captain pass on the suspicious squeeze he felt. Had he been a little less rude, he might've been polite and stayed, tried to make it seem like Rose wasn't the only thing on his mind, but Jack knew better and the Doctor lacked the manners to fool otherwise, so with an excited, distracted wave, he dashed back into the TARDIS and threatened the Ponds with a five-second rule if they did not retire into the interior of the ship.

Jack smiled knowingly and walked back to the Hub, his meager troops following him. The Doctor always barrelled head first when it came to the blonde , but it gave him a nostalgic smile at his two old companions.


	5. Chapter 5

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Five_

* * *

Just as he landed the ship, a very large thump resounded against the doors of the TARDIS, the wooden panels shuddering lightly. The Doctor frowned pensively, wondering if he had accidentally landed in the middle of a bomb raid or of some sort, but then he heard a loud groan, and realized whatever had launched itself onto the exterior of the ship was a person. He rushed to the doors in his excitement, rattling the unrelenting doors into a push for a several number of impatient times before recalling, with a series of muttered grumbles, that the doors were _pulled inward_. He looked out onto his surroundings—definitively Cardiff—when a loud groan cut his attention and he looked down to see a very clear Rose Tyler sprawled out on the floor beneath him, clutching her nose in misery.

"Rose?" He crouched down next to her. She groaned spectacularly, her eyelids fluttering as she took in the sight of him and his bow-tie. Her curious gaze flitting from him to the blue box she had crashed into morphed into a glare as it drew back to him, and he shifted under the unnerving glower she gave him.

"Couldn't you land anywhere else?" She gingerly rubbed her red nose, sniffing fitfully, her eyes regarding the space ship behind him.

Funny. He was finally face to face to her again. All the thousands of words he wanted to say and his only answer was air.

Thankfully (or unluckily), the sounds of ardent yells and police sirens finally registered as they increased in volume, and Rose shot up into a stand, nursing her nose with wide eyes as the incoherent shouts became tangible in her profile.

"You… You're running from trouble?" He couldn't help that doting grin that coated his lips. Her face contorted into a blend of a glare and a pout.

"I _was_—till I knocked into your ship and your stupid landing regiment." The patrol peaked out of the farther southern buildings, and the Doctor felt his hearts quicken at the prospect that had crested for him. His hand was already on the handle when Rose dusted herself off and gave him an impressive salute. "Good seeing you, Doctor, but I've gotta bounce."

And then she deftly turned around and bolted.

Even with his superior Time Lord brain, it took him at least two seconds to process the contradiction in logic and prediction that had just occurred. His feet bounced in place, almost tripping over on another, his mind contemplating whether he should chase her, but he found it to be pointless as his legs were already moving.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" His boots pounded across the wide slab of land, his eyes focused on the streak of hair fraying behind her. In a sudden jerk, he realized his respiratory bypass had kicked in, and with a numbing acknowledgment, understood that he was _struggling_ to keep up with her. She peeked back at him, her hair a cacophony around her and her nose starkly pink from slamming into his TARDIS.

"Hiding from the coppers!"

He frowned and forced will into his knees, managing to scrape elbows with her. "You realize you were right in front of my imperceptible blue box of a spaceship."

She clicked her tongue, throwing him an irritated glower. "Forget it. Cardiff's crawlin' with UNIT an' they know what to look for. I'm heading to Jack's!"

"The TARDIS is the best getaway machinery you could ask for. Why on Earth would you choose Jack's hub in Cardiff over that?" He didn't mean to sound affronted, but he was.

She looked at him as if that was the stupidest question he could ever ask (he's asked stupider, but he still feels his point is justified). He made in to drop another retort, but Jack's words echoed in his head, and he relented. If Jack were to be believed (and he trusted that conman with these things), then he and Rose were meant to arrive at the hub.

If she noticed his silence, she didn't comment, and he relished in the even sounds of their footfalls. But it was a matter of curiosity, as it had always been, and the Doctor held centuries of patience that just opted to useless impatience.

"How are you here?" He blurted, and felt no remorse in his bluntness. Thorough was his measure and Rose Tyler was distorting the world. Much of what he was doing was convalescing clarity.

Rose stared ahead, her lips in a form line. "There was nowhere else to go."

"That doesn't answer my question."

She peered at him through her lashes, small and grand all at once. He was coveting in fathom, trying and trying and _trying_ to cognize her thoughts. He couldn't find the tongue-tooth smile beyond the crest, or a frown buried under a valley. He couldn't find _anything_. Her eyes gave away nothing and her face even less. "It _does_."

His world twisted in ambiguity. His uncertainty over _Rose Tyler_ warped the sky into the earth until he couldn't discern between either. He frowned and she shrugged, resuming her steps around a sharp turn at the corresponding section, and he could sight the figure of a man waving them over in a flurry. Rose's eyebrows eased out their worry, and she let out a small sigh of relief.

"Ianto."

And it was this respite that struck him.

"You chose to hide with Jack over me." _Rose Tyler! Rose Tyler would never!_

She halted her run, her cheeks red with heat and her eyebrows drawn. Her gaze marked on a heavy intensity, one the Doctor was very unfamiliar with, and he found himself unable to withstand the weight of it.

"I trust Jack." Deliberate and cautious—her words were chosen and the knowledge of her contemplation threatened the strokes of his breaths, and just as easily attacked his lack of understanding—because he _didn't_. He didn't comprehend the frugal scrutiny with which she inspected him under. _She was too young._ Time couldn't have stretched long, so why did he feel so apart from her?

"You… you don't trust me?"_Because they all did. They all trusted him when they shouldn't but they did and you're Rose Tyler how can you not daftselfishhypocriteccrackcrumble_

His brain quietly registered the tailing footsteps that accompanied them, but with dismissive resignation realized that they belonged to his three companions. Her gaze slid away from him to them, giving him reprieve for a moment's strike, but he didn't tear his eyes from her. He'd watch every word as she said them, watch the stardust crawl out of her tears and planets die in the hollows of her cheeks.

She smiled remorsefully, shaking her head. "It's the other way around, Doctor."

She stepped ahead towards the gentleman waiting at the doorway and followed him. The Doctor couldn't decide which heart would fracture out of his chest first.

* * *

"Hey there, Rosie Pie." The lines along Jack's eyes crinkled with his smile, and his arms were wide open, beckoning her to him. The Doctor watched, one heart baited and the other constricted, as Rose released a breath that pulled strings tied to tears. She rushed into the arms of his former companion, dragging things he couldn't be, and he watched them, his jaw still and his mind unusually silent, his breath held as all at once, questions that had piled began to melt into dread.

The Doctor didn't understand. He didn't understand and that complicated everything, because it took chains of habits long forgotten and buried and it pulled, rattling pinstripes and leather, because this was Rose. How could he stand here and see her and not understand?

She was different. She changed. She wasn't the Rose Tyler he knew.

He didn't know the tears she shed and didn't know the smiles she gave. He couldn't follow her thoughts because there was too much, too _many_ years of unspoken conversations and buried experiences that the Doctor had no part of and it _hurt_ him. He held all his companions in his hearts—regeneration upon regeneration learned to take the memories and tuck them in boxes. Steps and moments and he'd recall them, but they were gone and the longer they were gone the easier it became to hide away those boxes.

Rose Tyler hadn't been gone long enough.

His old two companions were mumbling with each other, and it irked him_ (in ways that it shouldn't because they weren't his anymore and he didn't have them but his lungs were empty and it was the TARDIS and they were grinning daftly about space and stars and-) _that he couldn't hear what they were saying. His boots squeaked as he brought himself closer _(he needed to breathe),_ but a hand halted him, recoiling against the wind that was his storm and he was met with River's frowning face _(always with River because she always knew before he did.)._

"Doctor, no." Her eyebrows narrowed. "You shouldn't-"

A silent menace bounced against the air at her hand. "River, please, I'm trying t-"

The Doctor was interrupted by Jack's boisterous laugh cracking in the air. The captain kissed Rose's head, cupping her face, and the Doctor frowned, his foot stepping forward before his mind commanded.

"You understand?" Rose's eyes searched Jack's, her expression firm and waiting the _(how many years did they have between them?_) captain's response, and the Doctor felt sweltering tendrils squeeze his abdomen. Once more—a flash of the Rose the Doctor could recognize was there, and it was towards Jack and the Doctor could only taste the foulness of what he wasn't (because he wasn't anymore, was he? But neither was she and neither was Jack.)

It ached. He didn't know what exactly it was—his feet or his elbows or his bowtie—but it _ached_. He knew why before even asking himself.

What did he have to _do_, what did he have to _say_ to get Rose Tyler to look at him like that again?

_(How could she be here and not here, where she should be?)_

Jack smiled, albeit mournfully. The Doctor's ears would have twitched if they could. "I just want you to be happy, Rose."

The air was stale and sweet and encrypted. Rose grinned, clutching the old-but-not-old man tighter. "Jack, whaddya say we burn Torchwood?"

Jack smiled, tucking a lock behind her ear, and another nauseous wave constricted the Doctor. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. We'll ride a Slitheen into the sunset with chips in hand and your useless Vortex Manipulator as our flag." They shared a laugh, hidden from the Doctor and unbidden in its mockery because they were just as well laughing at him for not being a part of them, for leaving behind too much—and if Jack didn't stop fondling Rose the Doctor decided ripping an arm or two off wouldn't be so bad. It wasn't like Jack would die or anything. The thought made that acrid taste in his tongue melt into something just a little saccharine, just a little more refreshingly terrible, but it was easily distorted to its rightful bitterness. Because even if she wasn't Rose Tyler she still was and the Doctor couldn't make her grin like that or laugh like that.

Not anymore.

The three of them used to be a team, stories and laughing and daft and blonde and _Jack, stoppit_, and now the echo of what he moved on from (_he was appealing that he had moved on. No attachments to this lot whatsoever.)_and he didn't want to be here anymore, didn't want to watch this.

There was nothing holding him here.

Running.

He was good at running,

But... but away from Rose?

Blimey, he was good at that, too, wasn't he.

"What's he-?" Amy's coughed retort unmuted the world around him as his eyes focused and his jaw fell open with a soft plop as Jack kneeled before Rose, eyes twinkling and smile bursting with charm, his hand clutching a frail, small, velvet-wrapped box.

"Is he-oh my god! Is he-?" River's hand on the Doctor's shoulder went slack, reciprocating the Doctor's insides.

The laugh lines around Jack's eyes deepened. "So is that a promise? Marry me, Dame Rose Marion Tyler?"

It was a good thing the Doctor was excellent at quick reactions.

Rose didn't even have a chance to respond before the Doctor pounced on them, slapping the box away from Jack's outstretched hand and simultaneously grabbing ahold of Rose's, a possessiveness he didn't recall having taking hold of him and had him pulling her hands close to his body.

"She's not marrying you!" The Doctor yelled at Jack whose stunned face gaped back at him. The Doctor turned his head, anger blinding him from how close he was to Rose. His eyes were set, blazing with a gale, his voice firmly determined. "You're not marrying him."

Rose's brow peaked, a frown overtaking her face, yet her eyes sparkled with amusement. "I can't?"

"_No_!" The Doctor replied vehemently, his insides raging. This regeneration was very prone to anger and he was having trouble winding it back.

"And why not?" His eyes flitted to her lips, watching the edge twitch with the weight of holding back a smile. Her tongue darted out, running along her upper set of teeth, and for a moment, his train of thought fell off the tracks and dove into a fog.

"Yes, Doctor, why not?" And just like that, with River's steel voice catching line; he was reeled back in reality as acknowledgement sank its fangs into his mind. Sand caked his throat as his form stilled, his mind blanking on him on ways to redeem himself after his uncouth outburst. He searched Amy and Rory's faces, his eyes flailing for an escape, but they gazed at him helplessly.

He felt his hand being squeezed, and his eyes drifted down, remembering that he still held Rose's palms. They slipped from his grasp and his toes curled despondently. The blonde walked towards where the discarded box was thrown and picked it up, the amused smile finally breaking out on her face as she opened the box and held it out for them to see.

The Doctor leaned forward, his eyes dropping from Rose's face to the box she held.

"It's..." Amy's eyebrows furrowed. "That's..."

Rory stepped forward, a puzzled frown encasing his face. "It's a Cheerio."

They turned to Jack's laughter. The dark-haired man stood up, dusting himself off as he took the box from Rose and shared a warm smile with her.

The Doctor's hand flew out, snatching the box before Jack could pocket it. He inspected the velvet casing, popping it open and peering inside, indeed finding a solitary Cheerio sitting where a complacent ring should be. He turned it over, flipping it, even doing so much as to pull out his sonic screwdriver to determine, that it was in fact, a regular whole wheat, cereal grain Cheerio.

He raised his eyes, green clashing with the laughing eyes of Captain Jack Harkness. "Wh-Wh-_Why_ would you give Rose a Cheerio as an engagement ring?"

It was Rose that answered him, gently taking the box from his hands, his thoughts crashing for a moment when the nails over her fingers scraped against his palm. "Because if Jack had to get me a real ring for every time he proposed to me, he'd be eating dirt for supper every night."

Amy blinked, turning to the shamelessly grinning man. "You propose to her on a regular basis?"

Jack inhaled and chuckled, adjusting his coat. "Well, Rose and I have a long way ahead of us. If there's anyone I really can be with, it'll probably be her. Options are limited—what with a fate like mine. I figured I'd propose to her every time we meet till the day comes that she says yes."

"Not that I'm trying to instill any offense..." River glanced at Rose before falling back on Jack. "...but surely a handsome man such as yourself has many options."

The Doctor's hearts squeezed a little at the sardonic smile that caught Jack's face. Anyone who crossed the Doctor's path had the scars to prove it. Jack's were some of the worst he had left behind. Age had taken that smug smile and left Jack with worn eyes, and he still had an eternity to go.

"Not everybody lives forever."

"Yeah, so?" Amy shook her head, her expression puzzled. Jack gave her a wry smile and her eyebrows disappeared under her red hair. "What-_seriously_? You can? You live forever?"

Rory regarded the man, tilting his head. "For real? Are you like... an auton or something? Plastic?"

Jack laughed, shaking his head. "No! No. I just... can't die."

"How is that even possible?" River's gaze ran up and down, taking in this man prospectively.

Jack scratched the back of his head, his eyes jumping from Rose to the Doctor. "Complicated, , boring story. Best not get into it."

Amy opened her mouth for a retort, but a righteous look from the Doctor (one she might have ignored on any other day) ushered her back. A new planet was fine. That Doctor's past never was.

Rory scratched his nose, his face turned to Rose. "I suppose the whole 'living forever' thing puts you off."

The Doctor's breath stilled as Rose's brown eyes caught his gaze. Words whispered in his mind of moments of blonde and pinstripes. Empty wind passed through his chest, his right heart wheezing quietly. Forever broke apart and rewound until he could not recognize it beyond the incorrigible wanton of his own.

"Not really." Rose answered, still holding his eyes, stripping him of the ability to swallow, much less breathe. He was going to choke if she didn't look away soon.

"It's fine." Jack shrugged, his arm looping around Rose's shoulders, and he grinned fondly at her. "She'll say yes eventually. I can wait. 'Sides, not like we're in trouble of running out of time."

The Doctor's eyebrows furrowed at that statement, his mind rushing a bit too fast for him to follow, and he hushed his thoughts for a moment, caught in the way Jack and Rose shared a humorless smile. Jack he could understand. Jack was old. Timeworn people could smile like that. The Doctor imagined he wore that smile often.

But Rose wasn't supposed to. Rose wasn'-

He paused.

What did this mean?

Something sickly was crawling through the Doctor's throat, a thought that was slowly beginning to manifest.

"You—you're... _not_ running out of time?" River's voice echoed emptily within the cavernous walls of the Doctor's head, and his green eyes caught Rose's clouded ones. Clouded by grief, he had thought. He watched as she carefully regarded him, her gaze patiently expectant, waiting (ushering) for him to catch onto the unsaid words trailing in the air.

Rose was silent, and this silence was screaming.

And then it hit him. More than hit him-it collided into him with such a ferocious impact that he physically lost footing, stumbling back in his disbelief, horror beyond anything he'd ever tasted filling every cell of his body, and he couldn't remember a time he felt more _afriadafriadafraid_dread as it grabbed a hold of his two hearts and reared violently, pulling them into his stomach and forcing him to break apart at the waist, splitting into two pieces that in themselves were eroding. "Rose-" He gasped, struggling to find the air that would take his words. Why couldn't he understand those eyes? How much in their separation happened for him not to be able to read her?

And the answer screamed at him.

"Rose, _Rose_-" Tears stung his sight unwarranted, and he felt a sob wailing to break out from his throat at the pitying smile she gave him. "How-how... How old are you?"

Jack's face turned away, unwilling to witness this moment. Rose walked towards him, slowly, her gaze heavy with an apology (how stupid what did she need to apologize for?) and her smile tired. The warm skin of her hands held his own, firm in their grasp, as if knowing the next moments would triturate him.

And that's exactly what happened. "I'm four-hundred and seventy two."

The air around him seemed to break and swallow everything until only Rose remained, her thumb rubbing irregular patterns on the back of his palm, patiently waiting for him to take in this catastrophic news.

And the worst of it—he'd become the dust and the dirt that blanketed the floor, feeding on the numbness of neglect, swallowing any thought that tried to form as he simply _stopped_, stopped the Earth from turning and stopped the screams in his head and stopped his hearts for just a moment so he could stop (he needed to stop) and count the lines on her pale face. He didn't know how much time had passed, perhaps two or three of Jack's lifetimes, before he spoke.

"Ho... how?" He barely heard his own voice, but even as he asked, even as his brain denied the very notion with _impossible _and _it can't happen_ and _she's human_, he remembered the way her eyes hooded _"How... How did he...?" "It was his time."_ not with grief, but with resignation, the same way a death tastes to years gone by whose friends had become too old to mourn.

Her eyes were kind and suffocated in a sorry—a sorry she was giving to him and he wanted to selfishly suffocate in the brown _(sunny was youth so what were hers?)_ because even with this, he vainly clung to the dolor that she didn't have for herself but for him.

"Oh, Doctor, you know..." The intangible patterns her fingers traced on his palms became a sequence, letters he recognized that started to build on one another. Realization broke through the wall, his tears spilled and she was ready, pulling him to her, and he clung onto her for the dear life of him he held crushing her under his guilt.

"But that _can't_ be! I took it from you! I _took_ it! You aren't-You couldn't have-" He was yelling hysterically, but he didn't care. Panic and grief and Rose stifled him all at once, and there were no words to describe how utterly wretched those claws tore at him as suddenly her eyes and those stares and her touches and her smiles all fell into place because this wasn't nineteen year old Rose or Rose with a couple of human years on her. Those eyes that he couldn't reach were barred with centuries (day on day turning to weeks and then months and then_blurrushblurrushblur_ how many years have gone by does it matter it's not over yet) of experiences and people and tears that he hadn't been a part of and he couldn't reach her and it shred at him, ripped and _ripped_ and _ripped_ until even a regeneration couldn't collect him and he could do nothing by weep into her golden hair, for he had damned her since he picked her up and then damned her to live out a life with a human version of himself, denying her his forever when he would have gladly given it to her.

"BAD WOLF is the link between me and the TARDIS. You took out the vortex, but you never severed the link. Didn't seem like she was very lenient to let me go." She whispered into his ear, her hands smoothing the mess of hair at the back of his head. "I'm not... I'm not human, anymore, Doctor. 'M bit more like Jack, now, I suppose. Just…Just not enough to really be him."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." No matter how many times he voiced out his guilt, no matter how many times he heard the words in the air and tasted them in his grief-

He-

_couldn't breath_

_where was Rose Tyler?_

_when along the years had he lost her?_

It never got any lighter, never lifted a weight and didn't make it any easier to-

to anything anymore.

He couldn't.

_Wouldn't_.

He wouldn't let himself.

He didn't get to anymore.

"Stupid, it's not your fault." She kissed his cheek and it burned through his skin. "Bad Wolf is me. I do this to myself."

But all he could hear was the hollow sound Rose's tears had made when they fell on the floor.

* * *

OMG YOU PPL AM I DOING RIGHT BY THE DOCTOR?

~TSOE


	6. Chapter 6

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Six_

* * *

"Should we... should we say something?" Amy shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her nerves antsy at her Doctor's distress. He didn't even hide it in his usual manner, shrugging pain off with a smile and a bounce in his step, quirking about like a teenager on twelve cans of Mountain Dew. This was the Doctor, weary and ancient, the weight of his actions crushing him, because there was no way he could run from the outcome now.

The consequence was here, and alive, and apparently, never-ending.

The Doctor sat on the placid chair, staring into the corner of the small kitchen table. His three companions hovered around the corner, the sense of helplessness craning on them.

"The Doctor's not..." Rory started, but quickly fell into silence, no words amounting enough to fill in the gaps. Amy glanced at him, and he tugged her into his comfort, letting her rest her thoughts on his shoulders for the moment.

"I..." Even River fell silent, because the truth pressed hard on their heads. The Doctor they knew, this messy, bouncy, mad Doctor only ever extended to this. There was nothing of before, nothing of mentioned duplicates or Jelly-Baby loving incarnations. The Last of the Time Lords was perhaps the worst and the most they ever got out of him.

There had never been a Rose.

Or man who obviously cared deeply for this girl.

And the things he'd done. Done to both of them.

"Is he..." The trio turned to the invading voice, finding the blonde woman scowling deeply in the direction of the Doctor. She had left hours ago, leaving the Doctor to settle... to cope with her news, and now she stood at the entry, her hands resting on her hipbones, striking and alien and threatening. "Is he _sulking_?"

Amy felt a bubble of anger pop within her, the residue burning through her stomach and seeping into her blood, a glare forming with a fire to match her hair. She stepped forward, ready to give this woman a very dire piece of her mind. This woman who took the Doctor they know and turned him to _this_—this that they couldn't reach and only she could and it made Amy feel so helpless. "Now, listen here, yo-"

If Rose heard her, she didn't give the indication. She passed them absentmindedly and Amy made to follow her, but both Rory and River (always the level-headed duo) held her back, smoldering her fury in a jar.

"Just-" Rory started, but River finished.

"Amy, _watch_." And it was because this was River—River who loved the Doctor and River who held her head high and River who knew just as much as they did on this Rose Tyler that Amy halted.

Amy was terrified.

She couldn't imagine what it must be like for River.

"You better fix that pose of yours or I will slap you into the Stargon Nebula." Rose nudged the Doctor, who kept his face downcast.

"_Doctor_!" Rose huffed, recoiling out of surprise when the Doctor leapt to his feet, his face close to hers and his gaze severe with a promise. His head tilted to an incline, focusing his eyes into hers and branding the fires of Gallifrey into her mind. A quiet rush of air left Rose as her frown fell away, her mind catching onto his thoughts before they even formed. The air sung with expectancy, because there's no way he couldn't, even if he didn't-even when he didn't-

He knew, though, from the very moment he realized it was her splashing about the fountain.

_he had to ask_

Because it was her.

He couldn't think of anything else he could ever ask.

Not when it came to her.

"Come with me."

It wasn't Ponds or River or bowties or no-more-past because everything that had been strangled was held bated for this very moment that he had been so ignorant of and now it was here and the atmosphere was ready to exhale.

It didn't matter what they thought. It didn't matter anyone else thought.

Did she realize? Did she realize what he was asking of her?

What he was offering?

He couldn't think of anything that made his stomach twist more.

This was more than asking any other companion. Companions who dissipated as easily as he took them.

Companions he couldn't fully wrap himself around because there was no way his edges would ever meet theirs.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting.

"No."

But he definitely wasn't expecting that.

"N..._No_?"

"No." Her eyes flashed defiantly at him, and his knees twitched at the familiarity.

His mouth opened, but he couldn't hear the thousands of words rushing through his head being conformed to sound.

Honestly, though, shouldn't he have expected this? It had been about four-hundred and fifty years since she saw him (well, him-him Time Lord him.) last. So much could change in that time.

Enough that asking Rose Tyler to join him in the space and stars would result in…

...in _no_.

It had been almost as long since he'd seen her. He's moved on. It shouldn't have affected him this much.

It shouldn't have.

But it was Rose Tyler.

So of course it did.

"Wh-" His breath hitched as he caught on the hoarseness of his own voice. "_Why_?"

She glared at him, and it scorched him when it really ought not to. He should've expected no… He should've expected no because he didn't deserve yes.

But it hurt.

It hurt how much he wanted her to say yes, and it hurt so much more that she didn't.

"I'm not your responsibility, _Doctor_. I don't want to go with you, having you loom over me like I need to be fixed because your guilt labels me as your mistake."

"I wouldn-"

"You _would_." An ire had flared in her eyes, folding her mouth into a tight line. "Because I _know_ you, Doctor, and your healer-complex would doom us both. Don't contort me into the miserable life you're laying out for us."

A rage burst in his abdomen, hot with indignation and resentful with rejection. "It's been a very long time for you to define me."

Her chin was raised, and she looked so strong (much stronger than he looked, and much much stronger than he felt.).

"Then it's been long enough for you to walk away." The world shook under her unfathomable gaze. "I will not go with you, Doctor."

He didn't understand how she could hold her words so firmly when he struggled against his crumbling mind and deteriorating lungs. Words broke apart and fell away at his tongue, leaving him with nothing but the icy pierce of a woman he didn't know.

Parallel reality. Parallel reality best described the utterly wrong feel of the world as he tripped into the unfamiliar expression on the terribly familiar face.

Rose, whispered to him.

_No. Not at all._

Rose would've said yes.

A desperation sank into him, and his eyes jumped from hers to Jack's, searching and pleading but the captain gave him nothing but the turn of his head.

Anyone, _anyone_.

Amy, Rory, River, come on, River.

Nothing.

He didn't recall ever tasting a loneliness as potent as this.

And he couldn't deny that it was the result of (_her hand that he couldn't hold but he used to and they always held hands and he'd always search for it when fear anger hate ate him and she'd bat away the monsters that he couldn't)_ her—her indifference and her walls.

Walls he couldn't look over.

_(He took them young because young meant stupid but it just as easily meant open and he knew what to expect from open)_

He tried to physically swallow his despair, but when he found that he couldn't do even that, he did what he always did best.

He ran.

* * *

He jumps, dashing everywhere. _Everywhere she's not._ He takes Amy and Rory and River to the far ends of the galaxy and stumbles them over comets and stars. He is so fervent and furious in his running, refuses to stop even for a breath, because without the rush he'll notice that he's missing the sweep of pink and yellow and then he just might trip and never stand up.

They all notice and he never answers.

Come with me, he asks every time he sees a glint of blonde. _Come with me come with me come with me and never, ever leave_

He can't go back to her, _won't_. He has asked enough _(he's never asked more than once. How is it that __he goes back to mention time and then he repeats?)_and he has heard her answer. She will be one of the other companions who will dissipate into the back of his mind.

Except she won't.

Because a hundred years later he can still ask her.

He's never had that before. _(Romana will leave just like she left and he can't he can't he's done enough. Susan… oh, Susan…)_

And it drives him crazy, utterly raving _mad_, that he is here on the ravine of the Klok-de-Klin Festival with singing kitchen utensils and she is not—within reaching distance, just a trip to the TARDIS and she could be here with him, and he could show her everything and she could give him everything with eyes that sparkle and her smile and he _aches_.

He's never missed her so much.

He can have her but he can't.

He grazes his fingers around her elbows but can't seem to grasp her hand. She is a fading blur, sharp and distorted all at once, washing his world into a soap-bubble warp until Rory is silent and Amy is furious.

River can't even look him in the eye. It seems she's realized before he has.

"Find her."

He is guilty (and unsure why he is guilty), and her eyes ruin him in the way they gleam. "_Find her_."

He is not sure what surprises him more—River's fierceness, or the fact his hands are already moving on the controls. He realizes absently that he's been waiting for this all along. Amy washes her eyes over him angrily before disappearing into the TARDIS, and he is sure that he should be brimming with apologies, except gold is radiating and enveloping and promising and it is her smile that spurred first.

River does not look at him and he does not promise her what he can't deliver.

He is only sorry that she looks at him in sorrow.

He wonders if their stares will ever be kept from weary (forever, right?).


	7. Chapter 7

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Seven_

* * *

"I need to fix this. I need to." His eyes plead, unfair and iniquitous, for them to reserve their anger, to hide away that look of betrayal, but though Rory is solemn and withdrawn, Amy is raging with fires challenging the ones on Gallifrey _(they burn). _She yells and cusses, anything to _hurt_ him and _stop_ him, but he is solid, definite, as nothing else he ever could.

_it was Rose didn't she understand?_

And after screaming and thundering and boiling, there are resigned tears, and she is begging. "Don't do this, Doctor, _please_."

"I'll come back." He promises her in reassurance. "I'll come back."

But the Doctor has rules and he always lies and no one's felt the ache of waiting as Amy. "Please don't do this."

He can taste the years of aging under his absence and the sorrow of bleakness. Tangible in her words and even more so in her tears and he feels the bitterness that comes along with choosing, but he has chosen and he will not change his mind.

Amy senses his resolve beneath the skin, and that sorrow twists unpleasantly into loathing. She attempts again at dissuading him. "Why? Just for some companion? What about _us_? Doctor, don't do this!"

He shakes his head but doesn't try to explain himself to her. She's never had Rose Tyler like he's had. Instead, he vehemently assures her once more. "I won't abandon you, Amelia."

She regards him with an empty look in her eye and it hurts that she doesn't believe him (but sometimes he doesn't believe himself). "Doctor."

"I have to." He brings himself to her and tries to pull her into him, but she is quick to push away his hands and focuses on his fingers as they fall against his sides. "I need to do this."

"You don't need to do anything." There are unbidden tears in her voice, her lip is quivering and she is a child again, waiting bare to the stars for the man in the blue box.

"I do. I will not let this go." He swallows thickly and lets his hands brush her hair away tenderly. "I'll come back."

She thrusts him away and brushes past him, and it stings, the way that she is his first face and that she doesn't understand. She gives him a last scalding look of perfidy before escaping into her old life, and the only thing that keeps him from crumbling is the promise he reassures himself he will keep.

And the promise of a smile he can't wait to see.

* * *

He found her, quiet and contemplating on a chipped bench a block away from Powell Estate, the roof of her old home peaking into the sky. He didn't say anything as he sat next to her, regarding the silent way her eyes absorbed her surroundings, a home she'd been separated from for...

For too long for someone like Rose Tyler.

He wanted to know what she was thinking. He wanted to grab her head and feel every sorrow that ever tore at her and taste the lines of age that scarred her mind. He wanted the days she shared with him and the days she didn't. He wanted to see how her mind had morphed as the seconds disappeared.

He didn't remember ever feeling such a forceful need to-

He wanted to make her smile, dammit.

This body had never felt her smile before, and the nostalgia of brushing warmth morphed desperately in his head.

He wanted to understand her.

It pained him—it bloody hurt the space between his bones and the skin of his nails that he couldn't-he couldn't-

"What-what are you thinking?" His words came out in a muffled sob. She turned to him, her eyes flickering with more things he didn't know, studying him (_what did she think of him)._ The afternoon sun appealed to her hair as a halo. Brown eyes—old and old and old and old and he was older than her wasn't he—studied him peculiarly, regarding him and his young face. Younger than hers.

The Doctor froze as he watched her hand reach to him, his silent gasp choking and dying in his throat as her fingers made contact with his scalp, and he realized Rose was giving him... something he could strangely resemble as an affectionate pat.

It annoyed and delighted him in confusing ways.

"You're floppy."

He felt his hearts stupidly trip over one another.

"Rose...?" Her hand stopped on his head, and he tentatively reached up towards her wrist, watching her expression very carefully. This was new territory to him (_a new planet to venture on, new ground beneath his feet and different skies_). He didn't know how this new Rose (This-Rose-but-not-his-Rose) would react to him touching her. He used to be very affectionate when it came to her, and he was very aware that she used to reciprocate.

They were very different people now, he mused.

When she gave no rejection, he gently wrapped his digits around her wrist, and for one frightening moment, he considered how frail it was and how easy it would be to crush it, but the look in Rose's eyes as she watched him hold her skin pulled him back, always her pulling him back from dark and anger and twisted because it was so easy to be consumed and he was too bloody old and ancient and he sometimes forgot himself but this was after the war and this was how he was and then there was her.

This was a new look. A new look that looked old.

There was so much he didn't know about her.

She was a stranger to him.

He wondered how much stranger he was to her.

His other hand came around, his palm hovering over her knuckles, skin ghosting and feasting on a glimpse of warmth. He wondered what things had been done by this hand, whether this hand had ever worn a ring. Had it held a child and made banana milkshakes? Had it enclosed around his in the middle of the night and-

He didn't even realize how tightly he was gripping that small hand, bruising it between his own palms. He glanced up at her face, searching for things that could speak to him, flickers or words or something because he didn't—_how could she look at him like that and tell him no?_

How could she look at him like that after forcing her to live the life he had been running away from?

_Kindly_.Kindly._What if you were really old, and really kind and lonely and the las-(more like the first)?_

How lonely would Rose Tyler have to be that she couldn't look at him with rage?

He suddenly wished she were angry at him. It would be so much easier if she was. It would make sense that she didn't want to come with him and it would help him leave, because she didn't want him.

Rose Tyler didn't want him.

_say no, dammit._

_say yes please say yes._

But her eyes held his hearts so tightly that if he were to leave right now they might rip out of his chest just to stay with her.

And finally, her eyes scrutinizing, she revealed what she had seen in him. "I don't hate you, Doctor."

She... how did she...

No, there was no way she could've _read his mind_. (_Superior Time Lord brain—mostly impenetrable forces, especially when not in direct contact with the cerebral nerve cells in the head.)_

But he didn't... he didn't know so much about her that she...

He studied her, and a small, absolutely lovely smile came to her face, and if the world ended on this very day, it didn't matter, because Rassilon dammit, he missed her smile.

"I spent roughly sixty three years with you, Doctor." His heart constricted, catching a glimpse of a life that just as quickly dissipated, yet her smile didn't falter. It was sad, accepting, and his brain was quick enough to give him that it meant Rose had spent more than three centuries without his other self.

Enough time to mourn him, he supposed.

Her fingers shifted between his hands, her fingernails raking the pads of his thumbs. Her other hand reached up and poked his nose, a teasing grin lighting her features. "New face, new habits, but deep-deep-deep down, you're still the Scrabble-cheating softie that can't dance."

Sixty three years. Sixty three years to live with him and have a home with him and spend every day watching him and being with him and knowing him and suddenly the Doctor was very afraid. Terrified.

Sixty three years of him that he knew nothing about, and he was exposed to her in ways he couldn't comprehend.

What were the stories his Metacrisis had told her? Did she know the best of his past like Leela's found love and Romana becoming Lady President, or did she know his worst like...

Too much-too _many_.

He was naked and bare and she had on too many layers for him to even see her.

He was too... too exposed. He needed to get out of here, he needed to-

As abruptly as his thoughts cut through him, Rose resignedly retracted her hand with a sigh, shifting in her seat so that she could look back at Powell Estate.

He was a deer caught in headlights, unsure of his next move, ready to bolt at any moment. Uncertainty and discomfort hollowed out his stomach, and his fingers twitched on his lap, a desire to take back her hand prodding under the unease.

"It's alright, Doctor. You can go. You don't have to be here." Her voice was soft, carried by a breeze and wrapping around his lobe. He shifted closer to her, confusion barring his unease for a moment. She had taken in his desire to flee before-

"You..."

"I told you, Doctor. I know you. You've got that... that look. The way you hold your shoulders and that look in your you're ready to 's okay, Doctor. You can go." Her eyes followed the clouds that shadowed her old home, and his heart ached at the sight she made. Sad. His Rose Tyler was sad.

_(he wondered if that's what he looked like when others looked at him)_

And that squished anything and everything that he thought.

His feet propelled him closer to her, his skin ablaze with an itch that eased the closer he got. "What are you thinking?"

She closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the rail of the seat. She fell into the silence of the early morning, the roads silent and the grass hushed. The air drained away the lines of her face till she looked content; enough that he could be believe that she had fallen asleep.

"What are you thinking, Rose Tyler?" He whispered, so quiet that he doubted he heard his own words.

Rose exhaled softly, and the Doctor was weighed by the heavy fatigue that carried her voice. "Just run, Doctor. Run and never look back."

He opened his mouth, a retort or something clever ready to escape him, but she stole the moment, opening her eyes and turning to look at him with wood that his sonic screwdriver wouldn't be able to open. "I mean it, Doctor. Turn around and go. You're pushing towards something that you can't have and I can't give. You have no responsibility towards me. I'm not sitting here in hopes that you'll ask me to fly off with you."

"Then why are you sitting here?" He was surprised how angry his words were.

Or maybe not surprised.

Five years or fifty years (or in this case, four-hundred and fifty two), this was Rose Tyler.

This was Rose Tyler.

_This was Rose Tyler._

It shook his lungs and vibrated in his kidneys, carrying the momentum all the way to his toes and back. The wind turned and swiveled, breaking against his skin under the bubbling resolve that enveloped him.

He let her go. _He let her go._

He couldn't have her but the other one could.

But he had been wrong. So bloody _wrong_.

And here she was, the result of his mistake, the product to his wrong decisions, and she wouldn't let him help her.

But this was Rose Tyler and he knew—_heknew_ there was nothing that would stop him from trying.

Besides..._"She'll say yes eventually. I can wait. 'Sides, not like we're in trouble of running out of time."_

He didn't know if she'd say yes. He didn't like the way she looked at him when she refused him.

But just like he, against his very nature, had asked her twice the first time, he'd never stop asking her till she firmly planted her feet in his TARDIS and they were off making foolish bets about which marshmallow would win the Jhergo-Derby Race.

"I'm here because..." Her hands curled on her lap, playing with the hem of her skirt. A jolt of familiarity jabbed through his chest as he watched her pull her bottom lip beneath the crush of her teeth.

_There_. Here and now he could see where his old Rose Tyler and this new one met. Habits.

The two women might have different experiences that controlled their smiles but habits were defining and Rose Tyler with a nervous posture was something he knew, and his immediate reaction, impulsive and not thought out, was to take hold of her hand.

Hand in hand. That was what the Doctor and Rose Tyler were.

He could tell her reaction was instantaneous, her fingers curling around his, just as impulsive and not thought out as his was, her eyes belying her actions in their surprised tint.

_Surprised at his hand taking hers or surprised at how long it's been since it last happened?_

"I..." His mouth was in a tight line, watching the way the air fluttered out her lips soundlessly and the way she focused on their hands with such intensity.

His heart lurched as she lowered her head in a defeat he didn't comprehend. She sighed and lifted her eyes, catching his before motioning towards her old home.

"S'been a couple years since Canary Wharf. I used to have this mate here—Shireen. We were really close. She thinks I'm dead, though, you know..." Her legs swung beneath the bench, her gaze outlining the street. Her eyes caught his, and it terrified him the way her eyes could mirror his. "But... But they go away, y'know? Them. Give it enough time and their gone in a blink. I just... I want to talk to her before it's over."

Did he know?

Of course.

Of course he knew.

No one knew more than he did.

He knew and understood everything she meant and hated it more than he could ever hate a Dalek. This was the shadow of eternity, of never dying, one that had licked him and had bitten Jack—but dammit, dammit, _dammit_! Why _Rose_? Why Rose Tyler of all people?! Rose who cared about creatures of fake flesh and paid for the chips and ate a vortex for him.

A Rose that had to live four hundred and seventy two years and had to watch as her family and friends grew old and died.

Sympathy nabbed at his hearts just as much as hatred did.

He hated how much Rose had become like him.

And there was no one in the world he hated more than himself.

But he could never hate her.

Especially when she was nervous and vulnerable because she dominated aging but couldn't seem to approach an old friend.

He stood, pulling her up with him with a gentle tug of her hand. She inquired him curiously, and he smiled fondly at her. "Come on then. Let's go meet this Shireen of yours."

She shook her head furiously, trying to pull her hand out of his, but by Rassilon there was no way he was letting go. "No, no! I..."

Her nose scrunched up and habits played on strings that poured warmth into him. "I... wouldn't know what to say."

She frowned at her own lame finish, and the Doctor grinned. "We'll wing it. We always do."

He began pulling her towards the familiar path to Powell Estate.

"But... M' not the same, y'know?" Amidst her protests, this sentence had slipped in so quietly that it was quickly buried under the following protests, but it ran so loudly in the Doctor's ears, he worried his head would burst.

He stopped abruptly, turning so suddenly that she didn't have time to discard her uncertainty before he crushed her to him, wrapping his arms around her and delving her to him. He lost his face in the fibers of her blonde—soft and apples.

"You're Rose Tyler." He mumbled into her hair, his hearts shaking them both.

"But..." Her voice cracked, and in that crack he tasted a vulnerability that called to her humanity, and he feared that after this, he might never be able to let her out of his sight again. "M' not the same—not the same Rose Tyler she knew. Not even human, anymore."

He shrugged. "Neither am I. We'll stroll in there and freak her out together."

She laughed in his chest and the sound travelled through his skin and vibrated his hearts. A triumph that made him feel victorious filled him. He did it. He made her laugh.

It would take time, he realized. Lots of it.

But he knew he could do it now. He made her laugh. He could bring her to him.

More than anything.

He could keep her this time.

He could keep her.

He didn't think anything in the last century made him as happy as that thought did.

"She might-she might not like me anymore—the way I am now." Her face was upturned, giving him view of every furrow her eyebrows created and the dip beneath her lip, her eyes searching and hesitant and-

oh. _Oh_.

It wasn't just...

It was always more.

"Doesn't really matter." He mumbled softly, his hands brushing her hair away and his lips pressing against her temple, the smell of the skin filling him. She was watching so very carefully, and he was being so very careful, because here they were, both of them, and they were so old they had become delicate and it was here and now that mattered the most. "Doesn't matter 'cause you're Rose Tyler and she is _always_ fantastically brilliant."

He affectionately poked her cheek and grinned when she poked her tongue to brush him off. "And I've got a bowtie. There's no way this can't end well."

A pleased froth grew in fuzzed clusters around his ribcage at the smile she was trying (and failing) to hold back beneath a glare. "I can't believe you just said that."

He beamed at her, pulling her along, and if his smile had had the capacity to stretch even more, it would have as she took his hand and let him lead her.


	8. Chapter 8

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Eight_

* * *

"Have you done this before?" Her eyes searched his, prodding him for nothing but honesty. He wouldn't even dare lie lest he ruin what small progress he was making.

But then again, his real thoughts were just as terrible, and he feared every syllable that tripped out of his breath, wary of the slightest changes in her expressions.

He didn't want to say anything to make her leave.

Dear, Rassilon, no, he didn't ever want to bear the sight of her walking away from him again.

He was incredibly, incredibly terrified.

But he had her hand in his and he kicked away everything because that's all that mattered now.

His gaze took in the faded paint on the door, following a trail to Rose's palm in the air, frozen in the hesitancy of a knock.

"Like..." She sighed. " Have you ever gone back to visit a companion?"

"Well, Mickey and Jack, I suppose. How else was I supposed to find you?" He glanced away embarrassedly, his hand running through his hair. She threw him an annoyed huff, nudging the back of his knee.

"No, I mean, like, have you ever gone back to just… you know, see an old friend?"

His brow furrowed. "Sort of-kind of. I had been dying."

She regarded him heavily. "Did you approach them?"

It was his turn to contemplate—not knowing if his next words would scare her or bring her closer. "Only you."

She blinked, surprise stealing her features. Her eyes focused on the red of his braces, her ponderings kidnapping her for a moment. A fond smile melted his frown away as he watched her nose scrunch in her strain.

A wind blew her locks violently, and he caught one of the strands, tucking it away from her face. "Christmas was over and it was snowing and you thought I'd been drinking..."

Her frown deepened, her thoughts scattering. When had the Doctor ever re-visited her—and while _dying_? It'd be easier to take him as a joke had she known he wasn't being honest with her, but he was. She didn't—she didn't know what to think.

"Christmas…snowing…?" Her mouth fell open slightly as the needle dropped and she remembered ice and shadows and the man she didn't know but did—she just didn't know him yet.

"The tipsy bloke from New Year's." She frowned. "You-you..."

She punched him in the arm, and he yelped, his smile falling away at her furious expression.

He wasn't ready for her to let go.

"That doesn't count!" She huffed. "I didn't even know you then!"

Her hand hadn't fallen away yet and he took advantage of that.

"I'm the coward." He met her eyes firmly, his voice softer than her skin. "Always."

She stood there and didn't tell him he wasn't, because something the years had given her was understanding, and she knew very well that much of his actions while she had known him were out of cowardice. Her age gave her insight, and he didn't know whether to be terrified that she could follow his thoughts or terrified that she hadn't pulled her hand away yet.

If he hadn't been standing so close to her, he might not have caught her words. "Thank you, Doctor."

She smiled at him and it broke down everything that he was.

He held her warmth, keeping it close to him, and he could've stood there forever (and they could. They could if they wanted to. It'd be ridiculous, but it was physically possible.)

They were interrupted, however, by the door swinging open. A frizzy haired woman stepped out, her absent-minded expression melting away as her gaze fell on Rose.

"R...R...R..." The woman struggled to form words, and the Doctor held back a smile as Rose squared her shoulders.

* * *

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably, his awkward demeanour kicking in at the sight of domestics and the crying woman. He kept back, watching as Rose comforted her friend, astutely denying her proclaimed death. It had taken a good amount of time for the woman—_Shireen_—to calm out of hysterics.

"I just-I just-" Shireen shook her head, her hair falling into her red eyes. "Give me a mo' to-to-"

Rose nodded sympathetically, a gentle smile overtaking her features, her face forming a sun that pulled everything to her. The sight of it clenched the Doctor's heart and did the same to Shireen, for the woman threw herself at Rose before just as easily darting away, the sound of running water catching the air.

Rose stood silently, and the Doctor wondered if he'd ever come to stop attempting to read her mind. Even in the literal form, he could feel all the rigid mental barriers she accumulated over the years.

Not that he'd ever force himself into her mind.

No matter how much he wanted to.

There were a lot of things he wanted to do but couldn't.

He always ended up denying himself when it came to Rose Tyler.

It was a habit he'd grown to hate.

"Why..." She was looking at him now, her eyes glittering with the dust of an incinerated moon and her face empty without her smile. "Why come back to me?"

He smiled wryly. "I've died to your face and birthed to it. Seemed fitting to close the cycle."

She tilted her head inquiringly. "S'that it, though?"

Coward. He was always the coward. He could feel the drumming of his hearts, thundering in ragged quakes. He wondered, he wondered...

What did Rose Tyler's heart sound like?

Pain couldn't touch him if he never let it in, never let nothing become anything.

Would she let him hear it?

But how could she let him hear it if she couldn't find him, his cowardice guiding him to flee and hide?

_Stop __running, dammit! I can't I can't I can't-_

Yes, cowardice answered. _Nothing__ breeds nothing._

"No." He answered, his voice quivering. Rose Tyler was never nothing.

Her voice didn't not join the air and he feared her.

What are you thinking, he can't seem to say.

It was the possibility that she was thinking, _No, Doctor_, that had his insides shivering.

Instead, it's_—"can't seem to decide if I'm human enough."_

She grinned at him like it was a joke.

"For what?" His feet drew him closer to her.

The look in her eyes made his toes twitch. "To need it said."

He didn't even get the chance to be brave to show her that he could do it, for her because it's her and he'd do anything (even say it because it might need saying) to get her to smile again. Shireen stepped into the room and stole Rose from him.

And then it was _sobs and babe and I've missed you and how did you and who's this a friend, just a friend with a bowtie yes ignore him_ the Doctor found that he held more to the way Rose's fingers twisted to the words she said rather than what she said.

_Jackie_—the name somehow dropped in the conversation and it broke through the floor and fell into the earth, vacuuming the air of the room.

The Doctor pulled gaze eyes away from Rose's ears (he wasn't sure how he'd started looking there) to her eyes, waiting for tears, or grief, or something and in that something and he was given resignation and then he remembered, _ah, it must've been a long time ago._

But the Doctor saw love when Rose whispered her mother's name like a prayer and his hearts curled as the tiniest of paints had touched the canvas, and he wondered if he'll ever be able to finish it.

"Tha's so great she's found a man though, 'cuz Howard was right nice but—well, _you know_, and then there's Michael but blokes like that keep it cool but they blowin' their tops off and he drove your mum mad he did-Wha's this bloke's name?"

Rose drank the tea, her nails scraping around the chipped ends of cheap mug, and the Doctor was impressed by how great she's been at acting (good she was at lying.). "His name's Pete."

Shireen gasped dramatically, her nails glinting a flaccid pink. "No!"

Rose smiled fondly, and it struck the Doctor's hearts. "Yes."

"Well-bloody shucks and hell, Rose! You better not be pullin' one ova' me or I'll take the bottle to your dolphin, cracker and swear on three holes, you got that?" The Doctor frowned, trying to dissect any form of slang or anything otherwise that Shireen's speech could've derived from.

"Really—he is. Nice man, balding a bit, _rich_." Shireen was squealing like a pig and giddy and the Doctor's focus was set on the dust in Rose's eyes. "They sort of ran away together and there living on his private house."

"Oh my _gawd_, I can't believe this. May Dawson's _never _gonna believe this! I mean, right after Canary Wharf, I thought-" Shireen's mammoth smile dulled a bit. "I popped by your house—pay my respects. Was gonna clean up your stuff, figured if anybody should do it, should be me. There's no one 'sides you and your mum and I thought you were both gone, so imagine my mouth: open bonkers when everything's packed up an' _gone_."

Rose smiled grimly, catching the anger and upset under Shireen's tone. "I'm sorry, Shireen."

The woman's eyes flashed appreciatively, and her smile was gone. "A call would'a been nice. You don' just up an' disappear. I thought... thought you were dead."

Tension leaked into the air, and the Doctor shifted uncomfortably at the hard stare Shireen gave to Rose, who is proud or just as hard, taking in the guilt Shireen threw at her and swallowing it honorably.

This was why he didn't go back. Didn't go back to the hard stares and accusatory looks and angry frowns.

He chose to remember them while they used to smile at him and tried not to think how much they must hate him now.

Does Rose see that now?

"Yeah." Rose smiled weakly, and Shireen's expression crumbled and slid off of her and onto him, a new anger and alarming hatred settling in.

"Doesn't take much fool to guess—you must be that Doctor bloke who whisked her off in'an out to travel." The Doctor blinked, slightly taken back. "Jacks was very vague 'bout you, and Rose never said much. Always tried to catch a glimpse of ya, but never did manage to catch any dress worth its tag. You could'a brought 'er home more often 'nstead'a whisken' her off for months on end."

"Shireen-" Rose's hand rose to touch the woman, but she suddenly jumped up, startling the other occupants of the room.

"Rose, _Rose_—It's _unbelievable_! So much has happened since you were out and now you're back an'" Shireen's eyes were round and wide. "My god, _Rose Tyler_, you'd never believe it in a million years. Waltzin' here and then takes the flat—the one your mums and you was livin' in. Rose, I _swear_, I had no idea and I nearly popped a new cherry when I saw who it was. All cleaned up and everything—it's bizarre! Didn't know if I could ring in a good slap!"

"What—Shireen, slow down. Who're you talkin' about?" Rose stood as well and the Doctor followed cue.

Shireen slapped her forehead, a rupturing excitement bursting under the creases of her face. "Rose, oh my god, _Rose_, go see! I know i's bad, an' I normally wouldn'a given one second of a million years, but my _god_, Rose _Tyler_, so much has changed!"

Rose sighed exasperatedly, but the small (brokentiredold) smile did not fall of her face. "My flat?"

Shireen nodded vigorously. "Your flat."

Rose dipped her head and made a move towards the door, but Shireen's hand clasped her elbow, her eyes demanding attention. Rose matched the stare of her once life-long friend (her life was much too long to follow), and when Shireen spoke, it was clear and drained. "Don't be a stranger, yeah?"

Rose's eyes visibly softened, clouds melting away into the ground. "Yeah. I promise."

Shireen clicked her tongue acceptingly, her attention then swaying to him in the form of a hateful glare. "Don't keep her too long, yeah?"

_I will I will keep Rose Tyler and I'm not letting her go._

"Of course." He mumbled softly, although the mistrusting look he was thrown convinces him that his assertion has as much significance as the random dirt particle on the left corner of the room.

They exited the flat, Shireen embracing Rose one last time, and he was struck by the trust that shines in the woman's eyes, despite that Rose had disappeared without a word and pretended to be dead for several years.

He wasn't the only one who had absolute faith in Rose Tyler.

But it seemed decrepitly right—trusting Rose Tyler.

_(does he still have that, he wonders? This is obviously not the same Rose.)_

He walked obediently behind her (their roles were reversed and he was the companion and he wasn't quite sure how he felt about that) as they retraced familiar steps towards the old flat. The air was awkward and contemplating and silent, and she maneuvered her face whenever he tried to catch her expression. (He needed to see because he didn't know, and yet she was always stubbornly unrelenting.)

"Rose?" His hand brushed against hers for a moment, and she startled, her eyes addressing him as if she'd forgotten he were ever there. She searched his face, and he searched hers, and he wasn't sure what they were trying to find, but her face was so warmly and achingly familiar and when he laced their fingers she didn't protest.

It was all just as well, standing in the chill and trying to understand the other, trying to balance out years of too many things between them, that they be expertly interrupted.

"Ro... _Rose_?" Rose's hand released his as if it were on fire and he felt the scorch against his stomach. She whipped around and the Doctor lifted his eyes, sizing up the human male in front of him with unfair judgment. His stare parried between Rose and this man—this sharply dressed fellow with his blonde hair gelled back cleanly and a pressed tie against a slightly wrinkled shirt. He frowned, regarding the equal looks of shock the other was throwing.

The man was the first to make a move, stepping towards them, his face a contorted expression of disbelief and joy. "_Rose Tyler_, you're _alive_."

The Doctor felt himself bristle as this man wrapped his arms around Rose and let loose a flurry of relieved statements. The man was even crying a little, his mouth working a hundred words at once, and the Doctor had sickly froths spewing in his abdomen, his arm already reaching to pull this gent off of Rose.

"Rose...?" The man took a step back, putting just enough space to peer at the woman's expression through her silence. (His hands are still on her shoulders and the Doctor fears his own spine might just snap if he held it any stiffer) Rose's mouth was parted, lips moving soundlessly to words that were just as soundless. "Rose, it's _me_."

"Ah..." The Doctor was just about to reciprocate this man's rudeness and cut in on their moment (he wondered if Rose and he were looking at each other much like Rose and this fellow. It made it more appropriate to interrupt.) when Rose finally spoke, her voice small and doused with disbelief.

"_J...Jimmy_?"

The Doctor's head turned so fast it could've caused whiplash. His head readily scrambled, trying to find mentionings or anything of the sort as he readdressed this man in a new light. The world was much more focused, brighter with contrast and just the more livid.

The Doctor didn't even need to confirm or ask for a name. The suspicion he felt fits in perfectly, and his mind angrily supplied the name.

Jimmy bloody Stone.


	9. Chapter 9

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Nine_

* * *

Jimmy Stone's hands shake as he holds his tea, spilling onto his pants, but he pays it no mind, for his attention is utterly on the blonde woman and he can't seem to stop his mouth from talking. The bowtie clad fellow sits very close to her, but Jimmy doesn't care because she's here.

Except she hasn't spoken a word to him since he invited her into his home for tea.

He finally stops for breath, dismissing the heavy look Mr. Bowtie gives him as he reaches out for Rose's hand. Her face is lovely in its puzzled expression, but he doesn't miss the flinch that passes over her as his fingers reach closer. He withdraws, silently aware of her hesitancy towards his touch (he has not always been gentle) Still, he can't help but feel the sting of rejection, but he deserves it, _these hands deserve it_, and he has wronged her so very much in the past but this is his one chance to show her.

The air is laden with unease, an irate nascence seeping out of lives much disjointed. It's been a lifetime since they've last seen one another, and a lifetime it's been. He lets her lap up the sight of him, the hatched-yellow color of his natural hair, the suit he's traded his grungy clothes for, and the purified scent of a tobacco he hasn't tasted in years.

"Didn't think I'd see you too, though. I…" He doesn't know where to start, where to take the lines he's drawn and connect them to the girl who dropped out of high school for him. He's not stupid though. He knows this is not simply a reunion, and he knows this is no less than a chance driven by fate. This is a court, and he will prove his worth under the prosecution of Mr. Bowtie and ultimately, Rose, because he owes too much to her and has grown this mess of a conscience in her name.

She smiles apologetically, beautiful and somber all at once, and he wonders why she looks much older than she should be. "Jimmy Stone, what on Earth are you doing with a tie?"

He is not used to the playful tongue that peeks out of her teeth, the teasing banter in her voice. They never spoke like that. It was usually a cigar in his lips and the feel of her thighs under his indignant touch. It was the cusses she sung and the sound of her voice he drowned out.

It was too much and too many and nothing he is proud of.

_And it's a bit of her smile, but he's sure that sounds ridiculous._

He remembers that it is not only he who has gone through a lifetime.

"I'm-uhh… I'm a real estate agent." She blinks, an expression of pleasant surprise filling him with warmth. He doesn't know how to regard her lack of contempt. He's sure as hell surprised she didn't slap him the instant she realized it was him.

But he is grateful and he has a plan.

_"Real estate?_ Jimmy, you… you were in a band." Does she remember the leather he wore, or the splintered end of his guitar?

"Yes, well…" His unease has him tugging at his tie, and he can't stop thinking of how charming her eyelashes are. He is opulent and very perceptive to his own deliberations, and with a small twinge, he deftly hopes Mr. Bowtie is nothing to her. _(But he is not stupid and is very aware that Rose is something to this Mr. Bowtie.)_ "That um—that obviously was never going to work out. I picked myself up and hit college and got into real estate."

He is careful in discerning that mindful twinkle in the brown of her eyes, but she is viscid and he wonders if he can dig up an affection she once shone at him. Rose shakes her head subtly, disbelief meticulously squaring out of her memories, but she cannot hold it back, despite the willy-nilly faith she reserves for people. It's not that Jimmy Stone can't have the capacity to change, it was just… well, no one knew Jimmy Stone like Rose Tyler did.

It wasn't that he can't change, but back then it was blatant that he never would.

"You have a _job_."

He grins softly at the dubiousness coloring her face, and he feels slightly smug as she takes him in again with new eyes.

"Yes."

"You're wearing a tie." He smiles at the fond warmth coating his ribs. He absentmindedly notices that the big-chinned man is fidgeting with his bowtie.

"Yes."

She shakes her head again, and he is fascinated by the strands of her hair that catch onto the gloss of her lips. "Jimmy, you wouldn't even wear a tie to your own grandmother's funeral."

His smile falls away and she is quick to apologize, but he shelves the regrets off, his eyes burning with the promises he's made over the years. "I've changed."

Rose tilted her head, her breath bated. His heart sings with her approving acceptance. "Yes."

And then he relents, because he's wanted to for so long and she deserves above everyone because she was the only one who had ever tried. "Because of you."

Rose's face takes one of bewilderment, and Jimmy does not miss the scornful look he is given by Mr. Bowtie. "M… _Me_?"

He sits here in front of a Rose who has aged as much as he has and wonders what would've happened if he'd been sitting in front of the fifteen-year-old Rose, who latched onto his dismissive demeanor and his beat-up leather coat and believed every word he ever spoke.

He nods, and Rose still does not believe. Not that he can blame her. His infamy stretched to his lies and even more to the sting of his hands. He is remorseful in that he has much to climb before he can reach the apogee, but he has found his footing and he will not concede.

"Jimmy Stone, what in the right mind did I ever do to somehow steer you into putting on a bloody tie?" He throws his head back and laughs, and he idly wonders how he'd never realized how precious she was when he had her firmly in his grasp.

She gives him a half-hearted smile, but her expectancy does not drop, and he answers honestly. "You died."

Her eyebrows furrow, and Jimmy wonders whether he should feel irritation at the obvious lie sitting on his couch. She discernibly did not die, but he can't bring himself to care.

She's here.

_It was in her death that he arose. (everything else just sort of crumbled away and didn't matter and the rest is in the air that she's breathing)_

Rose Tyler is here and in front of him and he's wished for this chance too many times for him to feel even the slightest frustration with it.

"It was all over the news, you know." Jimmy's attention does not waver from her eyes—he wants to see something, to see pain or love or hate or anything that he can grasp onto and pull, wrench her to him until he has a hold of her and he'll never let go. "The Battle at Canary Wharf—with the Cybermen and those… those other metal _things_. End of the world was what it was supposed to be. It took weeks for everything to gather bout its wits and then the story finally came out. Newscast tore Torchwood apart and found them footage, and what went on during the whole ghost fiasco. "

He is careful not to yield his hold on her gaze, and he searches the brown of a teenager who was strung up on his bad-tunes – of that teenager who stood amongst the battalion of aliens and saved them all. "You were there. We all saw you. We saw you defend us." He does not mention the skinny man who yelled at Rose for being at his side. He swallows thickly and finally finds something—although it is not something he understands: resignation. "And we saw you die."

He does not reject the silence, because he finds he does not want her to speak—not until he's done. He smiles sardonically. "You know, when I first heard—heard that Rose Tyler was dead, I thought: she's probably passed out at her mum's place. And then people would pass in the streets, chant your name, sayin' you died a hero, and I thought that was the sickest joke the world could come up with."

When he breathes in, the air is encumbered in icicles and he finds himself shuddering. "There was a memorial service, you know? For the loss of those at Canary Wharf. And then… that old prime minister—Harriett Jones—she came up and introduced you as a hero. Signed your name into the plaque and rambled on about being there at Downing Street. I kept thinking to myself—there's no way we're talking about the same Rose Tyler. Not that blonde kid who hung on the back of my motorcycle."

Rose's mouth twitches with a smile, but it is heavy, too, and he is aware of that. The motorcycle might have been a good memory, but there were too many thick drinks and earsplitting shouts and painful strikes. He's wronged her too much for her to think of him fondly.

"But it was you." He's so quiet he wonders if she can hear him. "It was you. You were there, fighting robots and aliens when the other troops had all fled and-and—you _died_. Saving the rest of us. We had our tomorrow because you didn't—and-and-"

And Jimmy feels the fire flare within him, as vigilant and rapt as the day he realized what she'd done. "And there was no way I was going to go about spending my life pathetically when you died saving it."

He watches her exhale, her eyes wide and alight, her eyelids fluttering at him in tempting waves. He can feel the cloth clenched under his fists, feel the fibers clinging to his skin and he wants her like he's never wanted anything before.

"Jimmy." Is all she can muster, and it's enough for him. He leaps to his feet and pulls her to him, wrapping himself around her and burying her in things overcome. He's wanted this, regrets that he didn't have, that he wasted and she was gone but she's here _she's here_. The world cocoons around him, _around them_, and he doesn't care that the Mr. Bowtie's eyes have become terrifying.

"Give me a chance, Rose Tyler." His voice cracks and he can't bring himself to fix it. "I-I know this must be sudden for you, and I-I… I know what I was like back then, but please,_ Rose Tyler_, give me a chance to make things right." _He'll make up for the cusses and the slaps and the women and the alcohol. He'll fix everything._

Does she see how much he wants this, wants her? _(Go away, Mr. Bowtie. You're in the way. There's no place for you with me and Rose.)_

He searches her face, riveted by the curve of her nose and the shade of her gloss. She sighs wearily, and Jimmy catches a reluctance drifting through her words. "You have no idea what you're getting yourself into, Stones."

_Was that his nickname he heard?_ "Dun' care."

Rose breathes in to answer, but Jimmy doesn't get a reply _(he hopes of acceptance)_. Mr. Bowtie finally bursts with some sort of unintelligible space-time continuum coconut emergency, promptly stealing Rose from his grasp with a very stern glower, daring the other man to defy whatever stupid thing he said. Jimmy frowns heavily, acknowledging the severe dislodge between the two males, and he knows a rival when he sees one (although he can't imagine Rose going for some idiot like that).

Rose regards the two men, her brow narrowed questioningly. "Is there really a coconut thing?"

"Yes, and it needs to be taken care of _now_. And I might die and regenerate into something ugly so I need you to be there to assure me I can still pull off this bowtie." _(was that a shot at the tie?) _Jimmy's scowl feels hefty, and he's sure it's prominent, but he doesn't care. He's now severely interested in this Mr. Bowtie's place in Rose's life, especially since they obviously have some whole secret language joke going on between them. His hand finds Rose's elbow, and he meets the tweed-clad man's glare with his own.

"I'm sure you can go on and handle yourself. There's no need to take Rose with you." He doesn't understand the thundery look in Mr. Bowtie's eyes (he should ask for a name, but he won't), but Rose does, and she tears down on the storm with a howl of her own.

"He's right, though, Doctor. You have your other companions who can do that for you." (Doctor? _Doctor_? _This_ man?)

The Doctor falls silent, his gaze uncertainly trailing on Rose. Something bereft and tired cloaks the atmosphere and the Doctor's fingers are tentative as they wrap around Rose's. The warm air whispers in songs that the stars sing and in their wake leave the death of a new birth—and they are drowned, drowned and outshined.

His honesty will damn them, but it might be the only thing that keeps her. (he's so bloody scared of everything but it'd be so much easier if he let her go)

He could say the wrong thing, run back to the Ponds, and leave Rose in the incompetent hands of the willing Jimmy Stone.

But he's been alone for so long. He can mess this up so badly. But—ah! There it is. That one glimmer—that one rare string where he's not so alone and she's holding his hand and he makes her smile.

And he's lived far too long to let even that diminutive chance slip away.

"I want _you_, Rose Tyler." He feels the years crumble under her penetrating stare. "I don't ask twice, and I don't go back to them." _someone's gotta take care of this stupid lump did I mention it travels in time you're going to have a fantastic year rose tyler it's bigger on the inside_

It seems he's said the right thing, or the wrong thing, because there are tears in her eyes (and maybe some in his) and he's lonely and she's lonely and he is not running—he is promising everything. Beyond come with me and run runrun. He is promising his years and his grief and his stars.

_begging? the doctor does not beg_

"Rose?" She turns to acknowledge Jimmy, who somehow melted back into the universe. His face holds concern, and Rose makes to rub away any tears before they manifest.

"Yeah, um, sorry, Stones. The coconut thing's urgent and the fate of the universe depends on it, yeah?" She gives the Doctor a promising, watery grin, and it's the most precious thing he's ever received in his life. He gives her a vigorous nod and she mimics his actions. "Yeah. Fate of the universe. So we have to go take care of that now."

Jimmy's face falls, but Rose is quick to give him her number and a promise to meet up again. The Doctor should feel annoyed at this (he probably will, later, when she does fill out that promise), but he's feeling too happy and smug that she hasn't let go of his hand.

* * *

"She's singing." Rose noted, her eyes closed and her nose scrunched in focus. "I can hear her."

The Doctor smiled bemusedly, taking in the sight of Rose Tyler sprawled on the floor of the console room, a look of utter concentration tugging fondness into his hearts. It was not strange to find her doing things, things like painting the refrigerator with the loveliest of planets, or napping on a bookshelf, or laying down on various places throughout the TARDIS (much like now). He read the new habits and jotted them down, tucking them into the folds of his skin. He wondered where she picked them up; when along those four hundred years did she learn to cook or grow to hate strawberries.

_there is so much too much he doesn't know what they're doing_

"I suppose you would." He spread himself on the ground next to her. She shifted against him, turning her head and meeting his gaze with her large, brown eyes.

"You can hear her, too?" He found it comical that she was whispering, as if mindful of the ship overhearing them. He couldn't help grinning, and although it was hesitant, she sent him a teasing smile back. _flutter beat stop it hearts you're embarrassing m_e

"Yes. Always." He shifted onto his arm, choosing to face her and watch her. Her eyes sparkled under the lights of the TARDIS, and he reveled in the dizzying rush of his blood. Her eyelids hooded, and he felt himself withdraw as he identified the shadow that curled along her irises. The expression she wore—one of the ones he was finally able to identify – stung him in its availability. That was the apprehensive manifestation when she thought of the-him-that-wasn't-him and the world that wasn't theirs. Memories and years he couldn't touch and it upset him in tremors he couldn't express _(he was the one that left them there!_).

He wondered where her thoughts led her as she twisted on her side so that she could observe his face, and he distracted himself with the brushes of their noses. Her eyes traced the bone of his head, swallowing green eyes and twitchy cheeks, this new face that overlapped forgoing freckles.

"You're so _young_." His breath hitched, his reflections scattering as he trembled under the prospect of uncertainty.

He bid a shaky smile, rolling his head. "I'm really not." _(he remembers River and it hurts him the way the Meta-Crisis must hurt Rose. let the dust settle rushrushrush)_

Her eyes drew on sympathy as she finally addressed the unnerving effect her silence accosted the Doctor with.

(if he was trying then she would, too)

"Don't suppose those years have given you better dancing skills?" She gave him a promising smile, and he felt his hearts lift. His toes curled at the new prospective door that opened for him.

"They're _marvelous_. I was the coolest person at Amy's wedding." He leaned closer to her, resting his head against hers, and smiled when she leaned back. The world coveted into dirt and buried a mine he hadn't addressed for so long. He had missed her affection. He'd never quite had it the way it had been with Rose.

"What are you talking about? There's no redeeming your terrible moves, even in any regeneration." He jumped at the challenge and pulled her up to her feet in one swoop, delighting in her irate shriek. "And it looks like I'll take you Zexxon-Skaria to prove it."

The air charged as she met his stare defiantly, and his knees liquefied into his calves. He leapt at the controls, the timelines buzzing excitedly in their potential. She relaxed against the console and he halted at the staid countenance her face portrayed.

"Why did you leave the Ponds behind?" She twisted her fingers and bit her lip, and he was relieved that he had been sound in his judgment. "I mean, I don't see why you couldn't have all of us at once."

He straightened his spine and bared the things he couldn't say into the corners of his eyes. "I will, one day."

She cocked a brow, and his lips twitched. "Why not just take them straight off the bat? I wouldn't have minded."

He shook his head. "That's not it."

"Did _they_? Mind, I mean." Her gaze slipped from him on this one, and it was with guilt (because it meant she had been chosen over them).

He shook his head and caught her attention with the brush of his hand against her temple, scraping around her locks. "It was a matter of making things right between us."

Her eyebrows rose in surprise, and he regarded, with great pride, that a new sheen of respect had coated her eyes. "They're not?"

He acknowledged the truth _(faced it. there was nowhere to run now, really)_, despite the discomfort it held him in, but he promised to fix it and he would. "Of course not. You're unhappy."

She tilted her head, her frown endearing him. "Says who? I'm fine."

"But I could make you happier." He gripped her hands, and didn't bury the words he usually hid. "I want to. I want to make you so happy, Rose Tyler."

And he watched as her eyes trembled under years of aliens and blood and war and solitude. Her lip quivered, but her voice was steadily clear. "That's a big thing to promise, Doctor. I'm not…"

"I know." He kissed her forehead. "But let me, Rose Tyler. Let me try."

This regeneration broke too many promises. But by all the holy fishsticks, if it withered him to his last breath, he would keep this promise. He'd do it for this girl who bore with his anger (his home burned so hers should, too)as he took her to watch her planet die and she still found it in her to smile at him.

* * *

I'm glad if you're enjoying the story. By all means, I also appreciate your criticism. It's hard trying to juggle the characters into character, and I'm grateful to know how I'm doing :) [Also, it took me a while, but I realised for some reason, Fanfiction cuts out some of the words whenever I UPLOAD the document rather than copy-pasting. Anyone know how to fix that?)

~TSOE


	10. Chapter 10

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Ten_

* * *

It's so funny, he can't help thinking. So hilarious and whopping and there must be a great bit amount of joshing involved and-

_he's suffocating and laughing and she is brimming and he thinks he's gotten too old and she's quite a bit too silly and the world is tripping into a madness he understands._

He just might explode, he thinks, and this sends him rioting in glee.

And then her skin is searing underneath him and this mad, mad existence locks into place and he knows, he knows it's because of the seconds and minutes and days that he wasn't there and blood and anger and color and trigger and dust and cold and it all fits and slides easily under his palm, shaping into a cataclysm he can finally see.

"I… we don't usually… Time Lords…" It's stupid that he's even saying anything because his hands are working faster than his tongue and he's already ruined the button of her blouse.

"Yes, clearly." And then she smiled and he became everything.

Hate me, he begs her as he traces wet kisses down her shoulder. Her nails stab into his skull, hurting him and caressing him, and she laughs by his ear, because even his pleas are hollow and empty and she knows he can't stand it(but he is sadistic to no one but himself.).

They are both much too timeworn.

"You foolish old git." She gently gasps as he tugs, and they are tangled in some place (the TARDIS? Earth? Dangorn-36? Hell, they could've been on Gallifrey. He doesn't know.).

She finds this just as funny as him, and he silences her with his lips and she tastes like stardust and he aches beneath her fingers because she is burning him and she doesn't care (she shouldn't) and he is drowning in guilt and self-loathing and something scarily close to (he can't say) and they are far too desperate.

He rips and she scratches and they are a mess of laughter and red and touch and hands and it is beautiful.

She stops him with her palms, and fear right beneath the surface shatters through the ice, because he doesn't know her not really and there is so much unsaid and he can't think clearly when she's looking at him like that.

"You're throwing away much for this." And what she says he finds so ridiculous (he is so contradictory that he thinks in contradictions) because she pulls him closer all the while and he can only think that she should hate him and that he'd shatter if she really did.

He takes in her twinkling eyes and amused brows and bruised lips. "Can't think of anything that isn't worth it."

She smiles, cheeks tired and broken and what they need is time and she is just so lovely his hearts hurt.

He wonders if he used to hold her like this.

He wonders if she's missed it.

Her teeth scrape his neck and it makes him tremble, and then he worries if he is enough.

He is, after all, competing in the shadow of a man who was once himself. _can you hear the world tremble the ground is mocking him and he is hollow in skin the only thing he can be misfortune is a virtue and he accepts the thrums of his strings_

And a regeneration dragged everything much, much lower.

And it is because she is wonderful and knows him so much (it terrifies him) from years that he doesn't know that she takes the liberty to bite him, and her eyes gleam her intention.

She smiles sympathetically at his frown, and he sees, with surprise but not-surprise, that she is just as lost as he is.

"'M not sure where we're going with this." She looks to him for answers (he always has the answers so of course he wouldn't have them when it mattered-life and death situations notwithstanding). He smiles sheepishly, and he thinks her fear is comely and it eases him even though he's sure it shouldn't.

They are so alike it's horrible.

And she's so scared and he's so scared that they are clinging, and there are just so many monsters and there is only her hand (it was always her hand).

"You taste its complexity?" _This is too complicated. We are too complicated._

(Her fear is making him braver)

He licks her cheek and shakes his head in disagreement, and she laughs stunningly.

It doesn't matter.

"Can't go back." She mumbles, determined to have him eat every last of her doubts. He's determined to squash every single one of them.

He's made his decision long ago.

Run, cowardice begs him.

He buries himself so deeply he's not sure how he'll untangle himself.

He'll worry about that later. He's not sure he will, though. His own certainty is frightening him and this fright is becoming adrenaline and this adrenaline has him clawing and scraping and he groans. "You've already ruined me."

She stops and looks at him absurdly. (Ha-ha, as if he weren't already so)

But no, this is_ compensation_

_indemnity_

_payment_

This is all his fault, in the end.

It always is.

_This is all because he ruined her first._

He crumbles in her arms.

* * *

I want to wrap this up before the 50th Anniversary, and the uploading sequence is a mess D: I could stab penguins if it weren't illegal (is it? I don't know. Is there a law? I'd like to see a law against stabbing penguins. I dunno. The fact that someone would actually decree that law is pretty cool) and if it wouldn't break my heart so it's actually useless so whatever yeah bye


	11. Chapter 11

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Eleven_

* * *

The whole thing is preposterous, really, because just as easily as they've slipped into this, they both try to ruin it by scaring off the other.

Showing the worst of themselves.

He shows her rage and ruin and disregard and she shows him cold and distant and hate and they realize what the other is doing at the same time and it's just so stupid because they are both still very here.

And then he can't stop kissing her.

He's so ancient for a Time Lord and she's so ancient for a human that they can't find themselves holding onto lives he took and people she's shot and worlds they burned and burned and burned.

He still doesn't understand her. The seconds of centuries undone by him hang in shadows behind her lashes, shrouding her.

Some days there is so much fog he can't see her.

But her hand is always in his.

He can still feel her._ (beyond the smoke and the mist and the haze there is touch and that is enough because he hasn't lost her)_

She'll never let go.

He doesn't think he'd let her.

Sometimes he is terrible, too, because he still has hundreds of years behind him and there are no Ponds around to bounce and smile and keep running. He can't fool her.

And in the groaning of his ship and the cruel sympathy of Rose, he walks silently through his halls, shoulders sinking under (crushing, really) all that has been and all that he's done-

He makes to avoid her because he doesn't want her to see him. He doesn't even have to. She won't look for him.

_(but even in her tears she is warmth and she's made him better can't you see)_

He finds her, then, and she doesn't search for a smile or ask him what's wrong(everything) because she understands (and that is horrible and he's grown tired of thinking so) and she doesn't question. He slips into her silently and sometimes he cries and she is never any less.

And sometimes there are so many shadows between them that they spend galaxies apart in the TARDIS, unable to stand the sight of the other.

The whole ordeal really was frustratingly complicated. (The Ponds were so easily human. Ace and Martha and Peri and-they were all so easily, easily human. Rose Tyler is heavy and hard and she suffocates him.)

He finds her in a living room, eating laffy taffy and cussing out alien dramas, and he slips his hand into hers and thinks she is worth it.

* * *

She sinks into the seat in her mismatched jammies, her thoughts caught up in a severe article of particle cooking and the importance of French baloojas (kangaroo-shaped surfboards), settling into habits of domesticity (she is not as pusillanimous as he) when she catches him staring at her.

"What?" She whines softly, hoping she's not glowing purple or something involving attention because immortality (or something resembling it) doesn't dominate laziness and she doesn't feel like getting up.

His eyes trail on her hair, where she's used his bowtie as a hairclip. With a puzzled frown, he states, "You are absolutely mad, you know that?"

She narrows her eyes as he resumes fusing her curling iron with the microwave, and she chucks the magazine in his face and storms off.

They drive each other bonkers, but it's a comfort they need.

* * *

Sometimes they are on planets dizzying and horrifying and everything is spiraling into the end (it usually is) and they are laughing and running and saving.

This time he doesn't laugh, he cannot run, and he hasn't saved.

He failed.

He looks to his companion for that surprise, the disheartening (you've let them down you've let me down how could you fail) but then it's Rose and her hand is in his and she pulls him to the TARDIS because otherwise he'd collapse.

She'd never look at him like that.

Too old, he muses. Too understanding, he spits.

(Too loyal?)

He clings to her and begs to any willing ear out there to let him keep her. (There's no way they'll avoid that white wall forever.)

* * *

smiokneobgnreoigneosbtrgdsdfg Rose Doctor development and more to come. Watch me foam in the mouth (actually, imagine me, since you can't really see me. Think of me as a majestic purple unicorn frothing ice cream that's fed to greedy talking pandas)

~TSOE


	12. Chapter 12

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Twelve_

* * *

They are scurrying around in one of the infinite kitchens the TARDIS has supplied them with, giddily trying to make the world's best porridge, and Rose has the sense to strap some knee-pads on the Doctor and lock them with his own screwdriver, despite his indignant protests.

"Wait, wait, I found it." Rose pulls out the rack within the dishwasher, retrieving the sopping wet carton of sugar. She grimaces but takes hold of it anyway, skipping to the large bowl on the counter table. "Do I put it in? It's all wet and sticky…"

"Well it has to have _sugar_! Otherwise the porridge will be a useless lump of mesh and it won't taste very good either without it. It'd have that slightly bitter edge that sometimes the Sontaron's use for their own protein grained food which actually smells like a cornchip you could pick off of the Atraxi cafeteria if you've ever been to which is really not that pleasant and…" She drowns out the rest of whatever useless breath he is going to waste, gives up on trying to find a spoon (the TARDIS offered her a pogo stick when she asked) and scoops her fingers into the package, idly noticing that the sugar is blue, but she leaves it to the preferences of the strange and magnificent ship. She holds the soppy blue mess in her hand, much of the grains dripping between the openings of her fingers.

"This is _nasty_." She giggles as she dumps the huge lump into the bowl, uncaring of how much she is using. The Doctor bounds up behind her, his back curving as he leans into her, observing the mess on her hand.

"I think you used too much." He takes her hand and makes a work of licking up her palm, grinning at the way her nose scrunches up. "Oh, definitely. Way too sweet. Really, Rose, if it weren't for my superiority in biology you could give me instant diabetes. "

And to prove his point, he licks her hand again. Rose grins at his playfulness, and the soppiness of the sugar has dripped into his stomach, melding with the pink of her smile and colliding with things he can't name _(not yet)._

And just as easy as it is for her to make him smile, it's just as simple to freeze both his hearts. "You're married."

He stops (stops everything, really, because he can't breathe). She is watching him, no anger or sorrow or anything of the sort that he could resent. There is only curiosity, and in that he is curious as well. The air falls into a hesitancy, but they've been doing so well and he will not lie to her now. He swallows heavily and steps into the risk of her rejection.

"Yes."

She nods at his confirmation. "River Song."

Again, his tongue draws slowly, attempting to decelerate the moment as much as possible. "Yes."

She picks up a rag, wiping away the mess that has clustered on his hand, the same hand that is gripping hers so very tightly (because he's run so much and the world without the blonde glint is so far away). His breath is sucked into the tender strokes, and he is caught up in the gentle contours of her face. "I'm married, too."

She peers at him through her lashes, entangling him in the dark colors of her eyes. "But he's dead."

He exhales slowly, and squeezes her fingers, his lips trembling with a secret he's held for so long. "She's dead, too."

And in a way, the most important way (_in the way where he ends up alone)_, River Song is dead. Despite the sly grins she gives him and the flirty touches, nothing buried the fact that the first time they met she died. He knew what was going to happen. Their beginning had also been their end, and he'd fallen into something_ (she said she knew him and he had to protect the timelines! Those things happened and he slipped into them! Choice was hardly a factor, but in the end, it didn't really matter.) _he knew was never going to work.

Rose's hands find his cheeks, and he loses himself in her warmth and the sorrow of River Song _(river knew but there was no saving, was there? he can still hear the echoes of the library)_. Empathy clouds the brown of Rose's eyes, and he realizes that she had been just as trapped as he had been. From the moment she must have realized she wasn't aging—how terrible. She would've known all along that the clock was ticking and the Meta-crisis would fade, just as River would, just as they all would because they always left him that way and Rose was lonely, too.

Silence collapses into acceptance, and he is grateful for the unrelenting sympathy Rose has basked him with_.( kindred spirits they are, fall and tumble until the stars burn to ashes) _He revels in what he has, in what she gives, and they really have done so wonderfully, haven't they? _(he is so proud of her and he loves that she is proud of him. fantastic does not even begin to describe it) _They stop trying to make decent porridge, and she doesn't even scold him for dumping fish sticks into the bowl and at one point she throws in jelly beans because she can.

They burn the porridge but they eat it anyway, and when he starts puking purple (they didn't use purple!) she is laughing instead of puking alongside him (superior Bad-Wolfness, apparently), and even though he feels like crap (they shouldn't have added that much vinegar), she is smiling at him like there's nothing else in the world and he's mad (or sick) enough to believe it as so.

* * *

YOU PEOPLE I LOVE YOU (peace day, apparently. enjoy the noodles)

also, thanks for the reviews, you guys are great :D

Anyway, CAN YOU HEAR THE FLUFF NO YOU CAN'T CAUSE IT'S FLUFF AND IT'S REALLY SOFT SO YOU CAN'T HEAR IT COMING BUT I'M WARNING YOU ANYWAY SO NOW YOU KNOW SO YEAH

yeah

k

~TSOE


	13. Chapter 13

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Thirteen_

* * *

She almost loses him and he almost loses her and it was so close (too damn close) and they are desperate and cleaving and falling and so very angry.

Later he is guilty, and he kisses the marred flesh on her skin. She swats him dismissively, choosing to curl onto his stomach and pinching him when he bursts with a scold.

You could've died sounds stupid to say_ (they __are so old that death is a joke)_.

And for a terrifying moment, he thought, what next?

She looks at him like he's precious.

"Nothing." She mumbles, and his eyebrows furrow.

"What do you mean nothing?" She turns her head, looks him straight in the eye and he finds himself scorching under the singe of her gaze.

"If you die, then nothing."

He frowns heavily, trying to decipher her intensity. "What do you mean nothing?"

She glares at him, daring him to refuse her. "It means when you die (nineteen-year-old Rose would've used if), then I'm done. Nothing."

Of course, he refuses her. His frown gains weight, falling heavier. "You—no."

She smiles exasperatedly. "You'd be dead. It's not like you could stop me."

His form is rigid, and he can't even play with the thought. "No."

"Doctor," She starts breathily and stops him before he can protest, "I'm old. Tired. Been alive for much too long, me. Wasn't meant to live this long."

He opens his mouth to respond, but air tumbles out emptily, carrying nothing of his frantic thoughts.

"But you and me, we make the best of it." She curls up closer to him, and her eyes twinkle with mischief and lethargy. "It'd be cruel of you, asking me to live on when you know how sleepy I am. Can't go back now." _it echoes under his breast and it hurts and soars_

And he wants to protest, because everything she's saying goes against his very morals.

But then he realizes how stupid he'll sound, because without even realizing it, he's been secretly thinking the same.

He doesn't know how to cope after Rose Tyler. (the grins have given no turning back and there is no back he knows this)

He doesn't think he'll want to.

She's too tired to tell him otherwise.

This is why she is dangerous.

Senile and somnolent and spent and too much like him.

His other companions would've stopped him.

She'd heartily skip next to him.

After that, it gets a bit easier to slip into danger, knowing she expects nothing of him-does not beg him to (don't Doctor don't you'll die!) when he has to (there isn't a choice it's not an option can't they see?!) and make it harder on him. Instead, she quietly slides her hand into his, ready as he is.

He should hate it, he really should _(he's the doctor he rejects death he always should hasn't he cheated enough)_, but it's given them both a sense of peace.

They both need that.


	14. Chapter 14

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Fourteen_

* * *

Sometimes they fight because it's too frightening to look at each other-mirrors. Too alike. He can't stand seeing himself and it's worse when he looks at her and oh—it's him. She feels the same.

She resents him, in a way. He resents her, too, in a way.

They fight because they need to oppose and remind each other that they are different and she is not him and he is not her and they can't agree on the same things that line must stay it must not be crossed.

It is harrowing as it is lovely.

She is brave and faces him down till the end.

Which is why he never runs when they fight.

They always make up though, whether it's with her bad cooking (even though she knows how to cook properly) or his crafty innuendos (all it takes is a cleverly placed bowtie and a bit of nudity and it sends her laughing every time.)

Sometimes they fight because he is afraid. (He always is, really.)

Her eyes drift and he worries that she is thinking of the him that is not him.

He frets over whether he could measure up to his human self. (Hah! Measure up to a human! Superior Time Lord him-it was ridiculous. But she always did make him do the most ridiculous things)

He was always rubbish with emotions.

With relationships.

(Can you hear the siren of domestics? run, Doctor, run)

(He just has to grab her hand, first)

He fears the answer, so he never asks, but she is Rose and her time with him is beyond the TARDIS and it's been a whole regeneration but she reads him marvelously _(it makes him doubt regenerations. not much did change if she could still know him so well. he's so lost when it comes to her it's unfair. he usually knows everything.)_

"You're the same man!" She laughs at him, mocks him. "What're you even worryin' for?"

"Well," And it's nonsensical because he can't finish the sentence.

"Honestly," She shakes her head and turns in his arms, the sheets twisting around her. Her smile is warm on his shoulder. "I should be the worried one."

He blinks, recoiling in startle to look at her face. _"You?"_

She looks at him like he's the ludicrous one. "I'm competin' with—what? Nine-hundred years worth of women?"

Oh.

She smiles like it's funny, attempting to dazzle him with her light-heartedness, but she is so very human (even if she's not) and he sees what he didn't before.

He forgets that he is just as much a mystery to her as she is to him.

And it so daft, so silly to think that she could ever doubt her place in his hearts when they've come this far that he pointedly leaves the room and returns with three frozen boxes of fish sticks and blatantly pours them all over the bed, ignoring her shrieks.

"What are you doing?! _Doctor!_" She smacks his shoulder as he settles next to her amongst the now bumpy bed of stiff, frozen fish fingers and bread crumb residue.

"Making a point." He states a-matter-of-factly, keeping a sturdy face and not displaying his discomfort at the cold processed food grinding into his arms.

She glares at him, shifting relentlessly on the bed to keep the rolling sticks from touching her bare skin. "And that would be…?"

"Giving you a perfect model to the equivalent of that previous thought." He holds back a smile as her irritation deepens.

_"What?_"

"I've gone and wasted three perfectly good packets of fishsticks and now the bed is uncomfortable and useless." He buries himself into the hollow of her shoulder to smolder his smile. "That is the reciprocal of you labeling yourself amongst anyone."

He's really rubbish at emotions and he's worried he's messed this up (the stupidity of his idea is dawning on him and they might have to switch bedrooms now as their weight on the bed has all the individual fish sticks surrounding them.).

He's too anxious to look up at her face, and then she doesn't even let him as her fingers snake around his neck and clutch him so tightly and she is trembling and he is afraid.

"Don't…" She is crying and he is too dastardly to face her. She voices his thoughts. "Don't you _ever_ walk away from me."

_because I can't go back. and it's your fault it's always your fault don't do this_

His spine stiffens and he lifts his face because_ he has to see (Ijust-ijusthavetosee)_ and he's surprised because he finally fathoms one of the many clouds that haunt her brow. He searches her eyes, and he smiles despite himself, because everything about them is so fragile and silly and he-

Norway clings to her (that should've been so long ago) and he is acutely aware of how hurt she must have been.

He supposed he wasn't the only one who'd left hearts buried under sand on that beach.

He kisses her fiercely. _Never_, he promises, but it is a lie and she knows it.

Forever is the biggest farce they've ever given each other, and they know how impossible the world is, and he has always been in the here and the now and _run, Doctor, run_ and they always leave him in the end that it's a bit unbelievable that this will last any longer.

He can't imagine it not lasting any longer.

It aches, he realizes, more than any other thought that's ever passed his mind.

That she'd be gone.

_I'll lock you in the TARDIS_, he also promises, although he knows he can't keep it, and she smiles sardonically. There is so much they want from the other, and so much they can't give.

The tears cling to her lashes, imitating diamonds under the gleam on the light, and she is smiling and he realizes he is crying, too.

It is finally now, amongst a mess of fishsticks and crumbs and blonde hair and ruffled sheets does he say it, buries it into her ear and burns it into her skin, too intimate and so much for him and nascent and powerful that he dare not, _cannot_ say it out loud.

But it is enough for her because he has.

(Does it need saying?) She could've thrown it back in his face. At this moment he is vulnerable and it is alarming—how much he needs her to say it.

It's alarming how overwhelmed he is by his need to have her.

He is so disgustingly human, he thinks of himself.

And then again, he wonders, there's no way a human could be affected as he is.

Say it, he begs her silently, but she is not looking at him and he doesn't understand why.

She is still crying.

He registers, mutely, how engulfed she must be to openly cry.

Let me fix this, he pleads, not knowing what needs fixing (they are both a bit too broken).

She shakes her head, her eyes brimming, and his hair is knotted tightly in her fist.

"I'm sorry." He freezes, then and there, because he's always been bosh at this but he can't imagine she-that she wouldn'-

Daft old man, he is.

He exhales slowly, and it hurts. (He's made a habit of being rejected by her)

He supposes it will always hurt from now on.

He wonders what his face looks like, because she is quick to apologize and it sickens him.

He needs to run, but she won't let him.

"I ruined it for you." She is clenching him so tightly. "Because I'm selfish and I'm sorry, but I _tried_, I _did_."

_I don't understand._ He's not sure if he says this _(he can't swallow can't breathe can't do much of anything really and dammit he's the Doctor and she-)._

"I-Doctor, you had Amy and Rory and River and your TARDIS and I said no so you wouldn't-so this-I didn't want you to-" She sobs, and he is so glad she is not like him even when sometimes she is (he is sick and old and that's why he has them doesn't she understand he knows they die). "But you were there, Doctor, an' I was _so tired_ of bein' alone an' I _told_ you to _leave_ an' I _missed_ you _so damn much_. "

And then she overflows and she is saying it over and over.

_iloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyou_

They are both messes and irregular pieces but he thinks they fit quite perfectly together (as perfect as he can get, which is not so perfect at all, but that in itself makes it perfect.)

She wasn't protecting herself.

Even now, it was _("Once the breach collapses, that's it. You will never be able to see her again. Your own mother!" "I made my choice a long time ago, and 'M never going to leave you. So what can I do to help?")_

He was just so incredibly stupid sometimes. So _thick_.

He didn't think he could love her more.

"Don't you get it, you stupid ape," She laughs with red eyes and disheveled hair and he finds her lovely. "You make me so impossibly happy."

And it is so wonderful because he is not lying.

Every single thing he'd ever gone through to get to this point had been worth it to have her smile at him like that.

He throws himself onto her, losing control over every thought and falling on that desire of her. It's just as well that she screams as a solitary fish stick manages its way under her arched back and freezes through her skin.

"We're changing beds. Now. I don't care how symbolic this is." She huffs and rolls away, and he grins fondly as she brushes bread crumbs off her form. Her eyes wash over the multiple rolls of food, and she clicks her tongue disdainfully. "God, this was a waste. You could have just told me…"

But they both know he couldn't have, and he knows this ridiculous act means so much more.

She loves him. She still does.

Even as she looks at him right now and he sees that her eyes are brighter and it is him, it is him and he has made them so.

"Fishsticks made them more meaningful. I love fishsticks." He says thoughtfully, and she outstretches her hand, wiggling her fingers, much like he used to.

_how much it matters, Rose Tyler_

"Suppose we could still cook 'em up and give 'em to Jack. He'll never know." He grins and takes her hand.

There is so much work and years and tired between them and they've given up so much to have this.

He finds, as she leads him away, that they do it fantastically.

He'll work and keep working till she never stops smiling.

* * *

OH MY GOD I NEED FEEDBACK ON THIS CHAPTER I NEED TO KNOW HOW I DID THIS WAS EATING MY BONES OUT AS I WROTE IT.

~TSOE


	15. Chapter 15

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Fifteen_

* * *

Nothing stays terrible forever.

Nothing can stay forever, but he takes what he can get and it's wonderful. It's not easy, but it's wonderful.

While he's teaching her to write in Old High Gallifreyan, he tells her of his people and their greatness and their cruelty. He tells her of the Untempered Schism and his childhood and his exile.

He even tells her about Susan.

His voice quivers and if he wants to stop, he can. Rose will not push, will not press because she _knows_ how _hard_ it is.

To lose your home.

And your family.

And your child.

As she scribbles names on his chest with the swirls and circles of her newfound language, she tells him of back then, with him and home and Torchwood and being brilliant.

There is no one but them.

She shudders still and doesn't say so much.

But whatever little they give is immense progress and it is enough that they're both trying.

It gets easier as time passes.

She doesn't glare at him for his past mistakes, and he doesn't flinch at the people she's killed.

He cradles her through her nightmares and she praises him in his silence.

It gets easier to say out loud.

He still runs.

Runs madly, he does.

But her hand is always in his and they're running together and it's always some disaster or the other and he loves it and he knows she loves it, too.

He doesn't ask about Jack or Shireen or Mickey.

She doesn't ask about Amy or Rory or River.

The topic will come, eventually. Jack and Mickey_ (they always seem to follow one another)_ are Rose's only family, (the closest thing she has to one, anyway. And she's promised Jimmy no matter how much the Doctor whines) and the Doctor had promised not to abandon the child (who was always waiting) and the woman who knew him when he didn't (_they still have the singing towers and she still has the library that damn damn library_.)

But for now, they are content with just the two of them.

Time stretches under the pounding of their footsteps.

* * *

plox it's almost done. Wrap it all up. You guys have been fantastic, and I'm glad you enjoyed the story :3

~TSOE


	16. Chapter 16

Any unrecognisable names are previous companions from the Classic Who, or are connected to Torchwood. Feel free to do your research at the TARDIS Data Core.

Rassilon is the creator of the Time Lords (and the Doctor in Classic Who would remark with Rassilon instead of God)

In the first episode '_Rose'_, Rose mentions Jimmy Stone, whom she quit school for and was the reason she never took her A-levels.

* * *

_Lunacy at its Finest_

_Chapter Sixteen_

* * *

The groggy moments upon awakening were always the worst for him. Time Lord he was and returning from sleep always took slow, collective moments where he processed everything. The world overhypes and suffocates, calling and shrieking because there is a save me save us out there but he is just so sleepy and time is unyielding despite his lordliness.

And then the world sputters and chokes him because he can't feel her by him and it's utterly alarming (pathetic) how dependent he is on her presence.

It's a terrible thing, really.

The panic does not acquiesce.

_(frustrating it is but the time of minutesdaysmonthsyearsandyearscollapsingbreakingfl ying that just sort of tumbled onto one another and he'd grown too accustomed to having her around)_

He shouldn't have been sleeping in the first place (he didn't like being inactive, but she always tended to drain him, which took an impressive amount of work, mind you).

He lifted his body with effort, the mattress creaking mutely beneath him and his eyes swarming the room.

"Rose?" He called, and heard a muffled greeting. His hearts calmed.

_It's ludicrous, he knows, to worry she'll disappear. She's promised she wouldn't and he believes anything she says._

_But the universe is impossible and cruel. He wouldn't put it past it to steal her away._

"How do you wear this—it's itchy!" Rose exclaimed, emerging from the bathroom in his tweed coat. A giddy smile stretches on his face.

"Normally you're supposed to wear something under the coat." He told her, and she threw him a sly look. He laughed warmly, watching as she inspected herself in the mirror.

"This is-" She bounced on her heels, a puzzled look on her face. "-kinda heavy. Wha's in this?"

She dug her hands into the pockets and the Doctor watched her expression, a pleased grin forming as her eyebrows rose. "Rassilon, it's bigger on the inside."

She threw him a manic grin and started sifting items out the coat. He sleepily reclined back against the pillows, watching as she pulled out toys and various gadgets that were actually quite unnecessary and useless (you never know, Rose, I might need that Dorito.)

"Hm?" It was at that exact moment that her eyebrows peaked did he realize what he'd left in those pockets, and he lunged at her, with full intention of ripping it out of her grasp before she could see it.

She was quicker than him and made an excellent (Torchwood-based or UNIT training) maneuver, ducking under him and settling next to the bed. She pulled the item out, clutched in her grasp, and he worriedly watched her expression as she opened her fisted hand, finally catching view of he'd attempted to hide.

"Ah…" She exhaled expertly, her eyes rising and meeting his, disbelief clouding the brown of his eyes. "Is… is that…?"

He walked towards her, discomfort giving him wary feet. He scratched the back of his head, uncertainty playing on his nerves (rubbish, his confidence supplies, rubbish because that's how he is with these things.) "Um, yes, well, um… yes."

He wants her to smile or frown or give him any sort of indication as to the direction they're headed. Instead, she remains blatantly surprised, looking from him to the box cradled in her hand, trying to form a connection between the two. Her silence stretches, and if she doesn't do something soon he might shoot through the roof (and the TARDIS will wring him for sure).

"Rose?" He hated that he sounded a bit desperate, but he was confused and he hated confusion. He hated not-knowing even more (especially when it came to her) and she wasn't being very helpful.

She gazed down at the velvet box, inspecting the gleaming ring. She peered at him through her lashes, looking every bit ruffled and lovely in his tweed coat and soft skin. "Why?"

He blinked, taken back a bit by her response. He was sure that wasn't the norm of how these things went. He echoed, feeling his words bounce against the walls, popping like soap-bubbles. "_Why_?"

"Well, yes…" A thoughtful look takes over her surprised one. Her features are smooth and curved. "I mean, I can't really think of why you would even… I…I don't remember giving any indication that this was even necessary. Did I? Did I do something to make you think I needed this?"

She looked doubtful and a bit scared, and he silently cursed himself and pulled her to him. "No, no. It's nothing like that-"

"Because I don't, Doctor." She looked up at him, a defiant expression formed in a strong brow and heavy pout. "I don't need some silly ring or marriage to prove that I love you or you love me any more than we already do."

His face melted into a warm smile and he couldn't help thinking_ (just the sort of thing she'd say with a face like that)_.

He brushed a strand of hair away from her face and licked the tip of her nose, enjoying her scowl. "Of course not."

"Then why?"

It was with great resignation (on his dignity, really) that he sheepishly scratched his neck and admitted. "Because Jack won't stop asking you no matter how many times I threaten him. He knows I won't pull through with anything and he can't ask you to marry him if you're already married."

Rose's face was dubious, but when she realized he was serious, she burst into peals of laughter. "You're _ridiculous_!"

"You're ridiculous." He countered back lamely and stood back to watch her laugh at his expense. She scrutinized the ring with a new twinkle in her eye and slipped it on with a tender smile. His toes curled, tugging against the fibers of the carpet, and descended on her.

"Not a Cheerio." She observes remarkably and he hums in agreement, twisting his hands around hers and watching in slight fascination as the ring got lost in the indistinctive tangle of their fingers.

"Definitely not a Cheerio."

Rose sighs dramatically. "Well, we better hop off and show this to Jack while we can. There's no way I'm not losing this next time we run away from, I dunno, a mutant carrot or something."

His laugh escaped heartily, stars of affection dancing of sirens and breathing in (bluest blue _ever_) underneath his throat. "Alright."

"And…" Her lips scrape his knuckles and pour warmth through the joints, amalgamating into his veins. "…since we're making the trip to Jack's anyway…" Her gaze seeks his for consent, hesitant yet steady, and his breath hitches as he realizes what she's proposing (what she's _offering_). "You'd like to see the Ponds?"

For a moment, a resolute detachment overtakes him, a coping to (how he can't really think) the blankness. Ponds and Rose? Two very different lives.

clashing?

No, no.

Merging.

It would be brilliant.

He'd be lying if he wasn't a little afraid.

But he'd do it. He'd do it because her eyes are terrified and she still asked this.

_give him this_

And he can't just quite hold the swell in his hearts.

"I _love_ you." And it's magnificent because her eyes light up and he can hear his own voice and it's clear and loud and he's a little surprised at how proud he feels.

He leads her out of the room and smiles at the new direction he's running towards.

Towards. Not away.

He wonders if this bravery she's instilled in him would eventually succumb to stupidity.

And he smiles because he knew it would.

* * *

Whelp that's pretty much it. There's nothing much to add really (as I'm following the advice of my beta-reader-the story ends perfectly there) I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I look forward to writing more Doctor Who stories in the near future (will probably explode after the 50th.

Anyway, thank you all. You reviews have been great, and they meant a lot to me :)

PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME

haha ok see ya (or whatever it is we do with these screens)

~TSOE


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